


new destructions in the sky

by elumish



Category: Criminal Minds, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1, Teen Wolf (TV), The Sentinel
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sentinels and Guides Are Known, Asexual John Sheppard, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-21
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-06-09 18:20:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 31
Words: 90,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6918043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elumish/pseuds/elumish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Go to the Sentinel/Guide conference, Lydia said. It’ll be useful, Lydia said. You might even find your Sentinel, Lydia said, because of course in the ridiculous town of Beacon Hills that’s full of supernatural creatures there is precisely one Sentinel of the right age and Parrish is already her Guide.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> You may notice that some things don't work within the canon timeline. Sorry.
> 
> You're not going to need to know that much about any of these shows other than Teen Wolf. It would help you to know Stargate, but most of the more detailed stuff I'll explain as it becomes necessary. Basically, there are aliens and travel to other planets by means of a giant metal ring housed underneath NORAD and run by the Air Force.
> 
> Re:Teen Wolf: I'm basically going to be ignoring most of season 5, though I will be including some of the knowledge they've learned during it. This is ostensibly set approximately during when season 5 is.
> 
> Re:Stargate: This is set after Atlantis/Ark of Truth (Atlantis is on earth). I'm ignoring most of Universe because I never got past season 1 of it.
> 
> Most Sentinel/Guide pairings aren't going to be romantic or sexual, though some will be. Also, I still haven't decided who will be Stiles's Sentinel, so if you have any suggestions, feel free to provide them. (I'm kind of tempted to go with a Criminal Minds character at the moment, but we will see.)
> 
> I have started a series of side stories called [the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky](http://archiveofourown.org/series/780969).

Stiles is a fucking moron.

Go to the Sentinel/Guide conference, Lydia said. It’ll be useful, Lydia said. You might even find your Sentinel, Lydia said, because of course in the ridiculous town of Beacon Hills that’s full of supernatural creatures there is precisely one Sentinel of the right age and Parrish is already her Guide.

So now Stiles is stuck as the youngest person in a room—something he’s never particularly fond of—full of Sentinels, Guides, and random academics, and yeah, he knows why Lydia suggested he go instead, because it’s the weirdest combination of sensory overload and a distinct lack of anything that could give sensory overload that he’s ever seen.

Maybe shy of Eichen House, but no, nope, not thinking about that, because he doesn’t have anything in his head anymore except the possibility to have another person. Because that’s not at all an unnerving thought.

There’s Sentinel-safe—aka weak—coffee in the back of the room, and Stiles pours himself a cup that he doesn’t bother sweetening because he needs as much caffeine as he can get if he’s going to get through this shit show of a conference.

By the time he gets back to his seat—saved with a program and a not-Sentinel-safe (whoops) water bottle—the plenary speaker is about to start talking. About sustainable Sentinel-safe urban farming. And he can’t even use the phone because every Sentinel in the room would glare at him.

Stiles takes a drink of lukewarm weak coffee. This is going to be a long day.

By the time the speaker is done—an hour later—Stiles is ready to grab a Sentinel-safe organic urban-grown tomato and throw it at him so he get the fuck off the stage. And apparently the Guide next to him—bonded, given the black line tattooed down the side of his neck—has the same feeling, or at least can feel Stiles’s frustration, because he turns to him, saying, “A bit long, don’t you think?”

Stiles nods. “Yeah, no kidding.” He offers his hand, because Sentinels tend to not get that pissy when their bonded Guides touch other Guides. Usually. Sometimes. According to the internet. “Stiles.”

The Guide takes the hand without even looking at his Sentinel—presumably the gray-haired guy next to him who’s definitely military—shaking briefly. “Daniel.” And okay, whoa, judging by the calluses on Daniel’s hands that kind of match his dad’s, Daniel might be military too, or at least spends a lot of time dealing with guns. “Are you presenting here?”

Stiles shakes his head, fiddling with the necklace that marks him as unbonded. “Not really old enough to have done research. I’m mostly just here to learn. You?”

“I—” Daniel looks over at the military guy next to him, who looks like he’s asleep. Though given he’s a Sentinel, he’s almost definitely not asleep. And also, Jesus, how do Sentinels deal with conferences like this, given the squealing that keeps happening every time they get midway through plugging the audio cable into computer and then stop. “I’m presenting on civilian-military Guide-Sentinel partnerships. Tomorrow at—” The guy next to him sits upright for the first time, and Daniel turns to touch the point between his neck and his shoulder, just above the his collar. “What’s up?”

“Gunpowder.”

Half of the room reacts (and oh look, there are the Sentinels), with most of the other half (and oh look, the bonded Guides) reacting a second later, and then a bunch of people are on their feet, Daniel asking military-Sentinel-man for details.

“Smells like eight, maybe ten. I can’t distinguish distance by sound because it’s too loud in the room.”

“You want to try to reach?”

Military-man shakes his head. “Not worth the zone-out risk. They’re—” His eyes go blank and then wide, and he starts moving as he snaps, “They’re about to breach.” He raises his voice, shouting, “Civilians, down.”

Stiles drops down to the floor because he grew up with a cop and when someone with that level of authority tells him to get down, he gets down. After Matt, they started running intruder drills in the station, and Stiles has been through more than one, which is one of the only reasons he doesn’t freak the fuck out with the doors burst open and cylinders spitting out gas roll into the room.

Instead, he pulls his t-shirt collar up across his mouth and nose as gas fills the room and people start coughing, and his eyes start burning, dry and painful and goddamn. Gunshots ring out, pistols but not automatic fire (thank god), and he ducks under the chair as best as he can because he can’t see where the fuck the shots are coming from, and if he doesn’t die in this fucking conference his dad is never going to let him go outside again.

Someone shouts something in Russian too fast for his almost-nonexistent Russian to understand, and then some other people shout things back, and wow, okay, Stiles would really like to not be in this room where he can’t see and can only kind of breathe and never has he been so glad to not be pre-werewolf Scott because if he were asthmatic he would be dead.

The gunshot start to die out, but he still can’t fucking see because he’s most of the way under a chair, so he inches his way out, slowly, trying not to attract anyone’s attention because trigger-happy Sentinels mixed with trigger-happy Russian gunpeople (hey, there could be women, Kate Argent liked shooting people and so did Allison) are dangerous at best. He gets his head out, wiping at the tears that start streaming out of his eyes as soon as he pries them open, and tries to look around at what the fuck is going on.

But the whole room is still full of gas, and he can hear coughing around the gunshots, and people are saying things that he can’t make out, and if this doesn’t end soon he’s going to need to start figuring out an exit plan because one military guy and one maybe-military guy and whoever the fuck might be in the room are not necessarily enough to defeat whoever is shooting up the room, and fuck no, he didn’t get through the disaster of Beacon Hills until to die in this—

Fire grazes his arm, then pain, and he bites the shirt over his mouth to keep from screaming because son of a bitch, that hurts. He grabs at his arm, blood slipping between his fingers, and it feels like every nerve in his arm is screaming even though he knows it’s just a graze, but he’s going to need to stop it from bleeding, and fuck, fuck, fuck.

From somewhere near him, as Stiles is trying to keep pressure on his arm even though that makes it feel like he’s poured petrol in it before holding a lighter to it, and he mostly just needs to keep from freaking the fuck out until this is all done, someone shouts, “Clear,” in a distinctly not-Russian accent.

Someone else shouts, “Clear,” and then a third person asks, “Any injuries?”

Stiles doesn’t think he could make a sound even if he could get his shirt out of his mouth, so he just sits up, which may not be the best idea because all of the blood rushes from his head and, it feels like, to his arm. He curls up on himself as pain lances through him, because Jesus fucking Christ, ow.

The gas has cleared enough for him to see that it looks like there are a bunch of dead people with guns on the ground, and there are a bunch of hopefully-not-dead people scattered around the floor, most of them with Guides hovering over them, and if those are Sentinels they’re going to need to be the priority because Sentinels react badly to new stuff, and they could all go into anaphylactic shock. Which would be bad.

“We have twelve down from the gas,” military man says, and somehow Stiles is really not surprised that he’s not one of the twelve. “Someone call 911.”

Someone on the other side of the room says, “I got it.”

Military man looks at his Guide, who’s checking one of the bodies. “Daniel, call Davis, have him start coordinating an investigation. I want to know what the hell is going on.”

“They were trying to grab the Guides.” Oh, fuck. “And I’ll call Landry in a second, but a Guide is injured. They’re projecting pretty hard.”

“I got it. Someone find me who’s injured.”

Stiles takes a deep breathe, or tries to, but the pain is making it hard to breathe, even after he spits the chewed-on (ew) collar of his shirt out, so he takes his hand away from the wound to raise it. At which point he realizes he probably isn’t totally processing things properly (hello, shock, his old friend), because that’s probably something he should have dealt with earlier.

“Got him,” someone else says, and then they’re crouched down in front of Stiles. “You got a Sentinel?” He shakes his head, baring his neck to show that there’s no tattoo. “I’m a Sentinel. You okay with me touching you?” Stiles nods, and the guy (girl? person) touches his arm, which is still bleeding through his fingers. “I need you to move your fingers, so I can see what’s going on.”

He opens his mouth and manages to get out, “Shot.”

The person hisses out a breath. “Yeah, I was afraid of that. Okay, keep pressure on that. Someone, find me a first-aid kit. I don’t want to risk putting something dirty on this.” They look close at Stiles’s arm. “How are you doing?”

Stiles swallows. “Hurts like hell.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet.” Someone reaches around them to hand them a first-aid kit, and they open it and start rummaging through it. Stiles is definitely getting lightheaded at this point, everything sort of wavery around him, so he squeezes his eyes shut. “I need you to stay awake for me until the paramedics get here.”

Stiles opens his eyes again, even though wow, things are not really focusing well. “Not going to sleep.”

“Okay.” The person pulls out a thing of gauze. “I need you to move your hand away so I can put this on.” Stiles pulls his hand away, slippery and red and sticky, and the person starts taping the gauze on, pressing hard. Stiles is pretty sure that’s what he’s doing, at least, because he’s trying really hard not to stare at the hole in him or whatever it looks like, because he’s seen enough of that shit with the pack. “You’re doing really well. Can you tell me your name?”

Stiles swallows. “Stiles. Are you—the gas. Are you okay?” He should have thought of that earlier, but he’s not really functioning right now.

“Me?” The person looks surprised. “Yeah. Not the first time I’ve been gassed. I spent a bit of time in, uh, Bosnia.” They press down on his arm, harder, and Stiles makes an involuntary noise. “Sorry, I know it hurts, but you’re losing a lot of blood. They’re going to want to check out your lungs, too, probably, to make sure there isn’t any damage for whatever that was.” Stiles must grimace, because the person smiles a little. “Yeah. If it makes you feel any better, they’re going to be doing it to all of us.”

Yeah, no, that doesn’t make him feel much better, because the absolute last thing he wants is to be trapped in a hospital two hours from home.

\--

Jim is not happy to be at the hospital. Blair isn’t happy to be at the hospital—someone went after Guides, his Guides—but Jim looks tense enough to break something. It might be just plain territorialism, being around this many Sentinels, but it’s likely also a combination of the fact that even Sentinel-safe hospital wings smell like sickness and death and the fact that people went after Blair’s Guides. Because protectiveness runs strong in Sentinels, and to none stronger than towards Guides.

Which, at times, can be irritating, though it makes him feel cherished, too.

They’re almost at the nurses’ station, so Blair turns to Jim, saying, “I thought I would start by talking to the Guide who was shot before seeing the rest of them.”

Jim nods. “There’s a general who was there; I need to talk to him.”

“Army?”

“Air Force.”

Air Force? “What was an Air Force general doing at an academic conference on Sentinels?” Blair hoped they weren’t planning on trying to recruit anyone; Jim may be former military, but Blair does not want his Guides and Jim’s Sentinels being coerced into joining.

“He’s a Sentinel, apparently.”

Blair stops walking to look at Jim, poking him in the chest. “And why didn’t you tell me that before?”

Jim grabs his finger, pulling it away. “Because I found out two minutes ago when I checked my phone.”

Oh. Whoops. Blair smiles apologetically, before stepping away and up to the nurses’ station. He heads to the nearest nurse. “Hi. I was hoping to find the Guide who was shot in the recent attack.”

The nurse looks up at him. “I can’t give that information out to people.”

Blair blinks at her for a second, then realizes he’s in the bizarre situation of actually not being recognized. Back in Cascade and in fact most of Washington state, everyone in the Sentinel world recognizes him on sight. So he pulls out his ID, offering it to her. “I’m Blair Sandburg.”

To the nurse’s credit, she doesn’t trust him at his word, actually examining the ID before giving it back to him. “The patient you’re looking for is in room 203. I can’t give you the information about his injury, but other than that, we have a problem.”

Once he’s done talking to the nurse, Blair walks back over to where Jim is standing, tense, near the wall. “Are you going to be okay separated?” He tended to be unhappy with being separated from Blair after things happened, some primal part of his brain afraid that his Guide would be taken from him.

Jim nods. “Yeah, Chief, I’m fine.”

Blair turns to go, and Jim’s hand catches his wrist, pulling him back against Jim’s chest; Jim buries his face in Blair’s hair, resetting his levels. Blair lets him get away with it only because Jim is visibly stressed; manhandling is usually not okay. Or so he tells Jim.

Finally, Jim lets him go, heading off in the opposite direction from where Blair needs to go. Blair takes a second to watch him go and try to spot if he’s telling the truth about being okay with them being apart before heading off to room 203.

The kid in the room—and he is a kid, maybe 17—is sleeping when Blair gets there, though the second Blair sits down in the chair next to the bed, he bolts upright, doubling over around the sling on his arm and muttering obscenities under his breath.

Blair wants to help, but he has no idea what would actually be useful, so he just says, “You’re safe here.”

The kid looks over at him, eyes wide. “Uh. Dr. Sandburg. Your Primeness.” He straightens slightly, then winces. “What should I, uh. Call you?”

“You can call me Blair.”

“Blair. Um. What are you—not that I’m saying you shouldn’t be here. This is the S/G part of a hospital. You, like, own this. Or something. I’m just not…important?”

Blair wants to argue that, but there are more pressing matters to deal with. “You are, but also, you are under my purview by virtue of being a Guide in the United States. So first, I just wanted to see how you were doing.” Something which is even more important now that he knows that it was just a kid that was hurt.

“I’m good.” The kid nods, then winces again. “I mean, I was shot, which is less good, but mostly I’m good.  How are you? Are you good? You weren’t there, right? I didn’t think you were there.” He waves his arm slightly. “Ow.”

Blair blinks at the kid—whose name he needs to learn—because he doesn’t know if he’s ever met someone who babbles this much. Is this what people feel like when they talk to him? “I wasn’t there, no. Do you have someone coming to stay here with you?”

“I’m assuming they called my dad, seeing as he’s my next of kin and everything, and I’m not an…adult. Um. In the United States. I probably count as an adult somewhere. Not in Japan. Japan it’s like 20. Which is their drinking age, too. It’s really stupid that the US drinking age is older than our age of majority. I’m on a lot of pain medication. By which I mean…pain medication. Did you need something?”

“I did want to talk to you and make sure you were okay, but I spoke to the nurse, and they also said that they don’t have access to your Guide registration information.” The kid’s eyes widen. “Don’t worry, this isn’t too uncommon. Chances are either the registration hasn’t been synced up, which can happen if you emerged recently, or wherever you registered hasn’t joined the national database yet, but either way, we’re going to need access to that. Or at least the hospital is, so that they know if there’s anything you need to avoid. You may not be able to feel much of what comes with being a Guide at the moment, but your body can still have bad reactions to certain drugs or processes if you are high enough level.”

The kid goes sheet-white, dark bruises under his eyes standing out starkly. Which is not the reaction Blair was expecting, though at this point much of what’s going on involving this kid isn’t what he was expecting. “I, um. Don’t know what level I am.” He rubs his arm, grimacing.

“Did your registration center not tell you?” That was bizarre, though some places were simply not as good as others. “We can give you that information once the center sends the information over.”

“No, that’s not—I’m not exactly registered. I mean, I’m—” He pulls out the Guide necklace from under his hospital gown. “I’m a Guide, I know I’m a Guide, you know I’m a Guide, I’m properly marked as a Guide, I’m just not…registered as one.”

“Why not?”

The kid puts his free thumb in his mouth to chew on the pad of it. “I don’t want the government getting involved in my life. So can we just pretend I’m registered? Chances are I’m not high level, I don’t have a Sentinel, and I likely won’t ever find one, so it’s all good.”

“We can’t just pretend that you’re not a Guide; you do need to be registered. This probably won’t be the last time you end up in the hospital or have to be treated by a doctor in your life”—the kid laughs sharply—“and if you ever do find a Sentinel, which is likely because they outnumber us at least eleven-to-ten, this will be information we need to have. So no, I can’t let you stay unregistered.” Blair smiles apologetically at the kid instead of lunching into the lecture he wants to give on how stupid it is not to not get registered. So many things could have gone wrong; it’s a miracle the kid hasn’t had some reaction to something since he emerged. “I can do your registration myself, if it’ll make you feel better to be done by someone not in a suit.”

“I—you’re the _Guide Prime_. Of the _United States_.”

“And you’re one of my Guides. It’s no trouble—it won’t take long, and this way I can make sure it gets done.”

The kid scowls, then sighs. “I was afraid you were going to say that. I’m guessing I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

“Not really. Though you can wait until your father is here if you’d like. You’re old enough to be tested and registered without a parent or guardian, but you’re a minor, so you’re entitled to having him here.”

He shakes his head. “No, let’s do this.”


	2. Chapter 2

Blair heads down the hallway towards where he can feel Jim; he can feel the discomfort of the entire ward of the hospital, mostly because it’s full of Sentinels and Guides who were exposed to something unknown—always bad—and don’t want to be in a hospital because hospitals have up until recently been notoriously unfriendly to Sentinels and Guides.

He was kicked out of the kid’s room when a nurse came in to change his IV (the kid went sheet white, looking at the IV like he hadn’t noticed it was there and really wanted to pretend it wasn’t), which is just as well because he needs another Guide for this.

There are three other people in the room with Jim when Blair gets there: a gray-haired Sentinel sitting in bed and scowling, a younger—but not young—Guide, and a man in a formal military uniform. Jim nods to Blair as he walks in, moving a hand to the back of Blair’s neck.

There’s something familiar about the Guide, and it takes Blair a second to realize how he knows him. “Daniel?”

Daniel blinks at him. “Blair?”

“I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

The Sentinel sits up a little more. “You two know each other?”

Daniel looks at his Sentinel. “Blair and I met at a conference in grad school. We’re not really in the same field of study—he’s more on South America and its connection to Sentinels—but we’re both outsiders in our field.”

The military man says, “I don’t know if Guide Sandburg can be counted as an outsider in his field, considering that he literally wrote the book on Sentinel/Guide training.”

“And because he’s Guide Prime of the United States,” the Sentinel puts in mildly. “Jack O’Neill. What can I do for you?”

Blair glances at Jim, who doesn’t say anything. Which means he’s letting Blair run this through, and they’ll compare notes later. “First I wanted to check to see how you’re doing. Both of you.”

“We’re both fine,” Jack says. “A little pissed that someone tried to kidnap my Guide, but believe me when I say that this is neither the first time I’ve been gassed nor the first time someone’s tried to take him.”

Daniel grimaces. “This one wasn’t even my fault.”

“Well you know how much the Russians like you.”

Daniel coughs. “I’m surprised they haven’t banned me from the country yet.” He looks at Blair. “Sorry.”

The military guy steps forward. “As I was telling your Sentinel, because an Air Force general was targeted in this attack, the Air Force will be taking control of this investigation.”

Jim stiffens at that. “And as I said, no way in hell. This is an SG investigation. We have jurisdiction over any investigation involving attacks on Sentinels or Guides. That includes an attack on General O’Neill.”

This is not going to end any time soon, so Blair turns to Daniel and asks, “Would you mind giving me a hand with something? There’s a Guide here who never got registered, so I want to get that done with.”

Daniel nods. “Sure. Jack?”

Jack shrugs. “Don’t get yourself kidnapped. Or killed. I’m getting too old to break you out of places.”

“I’m also pretty sure they’re not too fond of Generals being in the field.”

“I’m already looking forward to the lecture from the President.” Jack touches Daniel’s hand. “I’ll keep an ear out for you.”

Daniel grimaces at him. “If you zone trying to listen to me, I’m going to be really irritated with you.”

Jack smirks at him. “Go, Danny boy. I’m fine. Just exhilarated to get to listen to Davis and Mr. Sentinel Prime duke it out over who gets to run around chasing Russians.”

Daniel looks over Blair, then heads over towards where he’s standing. Blair glances at Jim, who’s still in a staring contest with the military guy. “I’ll be back.” Jim’s hand tightens briefly then nods.

Daniel waits until they’re a while down the hallway before asking, “So, how have you been? It’s been, what, almost twenty years?”

“Something like that. A lot of my work has shifted from academic anthropology to more practical work for Sentinels and Guides.” Blair gives a small smile. “It’s a surprising amount of work, trying to wrangle the S/G community. And the politicians.”

Daniel grimaces. “Yeah, I know all about that. The politicians, not the Sentinel/Guide work.”

Blair looks at him. “How about you? What kind of work are you doing now?”

“I’m, uh, a consultant for the Air Force.”

That feels like a lie, but Blair has a feeling it’s classified, and it’s not worth it to push. Yet. At least not until they’re done helping this kid. So instead he asks, “Is that where you met your Sentinel?”

Daniel nods. “We’ve been working together for year. We didn’t actually bond when we first met, but our paths crossed about a year later.”

“And it was bonding at first sight?”

Blair means it as a joke, but a wave of pain, muted but real, washes through Daniel; he smiles a little. “Something like that.

Blair wants to press, but they’re right outside the kid’s hospital room, and that has to take priority at the moment. But just for the moment, and then he’ll catch up with Daniel. In between trying to find whoever tried to kidnap a few dozen of his Guides.

The kid blinks at the two of them when they walk into the room; he’s propped up on the pillow, phone in hand. “Hi. I met you before. I met one of you before. I didn’t meet the other. Actually, maybe I met both of you. I’m Stiles, and I’m on a lot of pain medication.” He looks at his IV, then cringes. “That is in my arm. That is really gross.”

Daniel walks over to him, and Blair pauses to turn on the white noise generator and close the door. Daniel offers his hand. “My name is Daniel Jackson.”

“You’re the military guy who’s not a military guy whose Sentinel is a military guy.”

“Excuse me?”

Stiles waves the hand attached to an IV—the one not in a sling—then flinches. “That feels super fucking weird. I have a giant needle in my arm. You’re the guy who has gun callus hands but you don’t look like a military person and you said you’re a civilian and hi. I really don’t want to be registered.”

Daniel glances back at Blair, who nods, stepping forward. “We can wait until your father is here if you’d like.”

Stiles shakes his head. “Nah. I’m good. Well, less good. Being shot classifies as less good. Unless you’re Scott. But if I’m going to be registered, let’s just get on with it. I have no idea how Guide registration works, though. Because my friend is a Sentinel but not my Sentinel and her Guide is older and I have no idea if he even grew up in Beacon Hills and I should probably know that but we don’t talk about our sad backstories. Does this require taking my blood or something? Because they’re trying to stick blood in me, so it might be bad to take more out.”

Blair shakes his head. “The main part is just a simple empathetic test. How much do you know about Guide levels?”

“I’m on a lot of pain medication, and I was just shot.”

Right. “Guides are ranked on a level from 1 to 100. Technically, a 0-ranked Guide is just a regular human. Each twenty additional point of ranking corresponds—more or less—to an additional sense that they can help a Sentinel control. What the points actually refer to, though, technically, is the level of empathetic power that a Guide can send out. Before a Guide is bonded, however, they can’t send out empathetic power. Guide levels are symmetric, though, so we can test it by me projecting empathetic power at you; we’ll record the level that passes through and subtract that from my level to get your level. The level you receive at will be the level you can project at and, as such, the level you are.”

Stiles’s eyes are wide, and Blair is afraid he gave him too much information to process all at once. But then he asks, “And military-not-military person? Daniel. Your name is Daniel. What’s Daniel going to be doing?”

Daniel answers, “I’ll—I assume—be acting as a passive receiver. My job is to absorb the leftover empathetic power and say what level it is.”

Blair glances over at him, because he actually should have checked this beforehand. “You’re eighty, eighty-five, right?” Daniel nods. “Let me know if you need me to receive.”

“Will do.”

Blair turns his attention back to Stiles. “This should only take a couple minutes, and it won’t hurt at all. Just relax. You shouldn’t feel it.”

“That’s…” Stiles blinks at him. “Reassuring.”

Blair smiles at him, then closes his eyes, gathering himself to send out his empathetic power. It’s not the same as grounding Jim, or even as communicating with him. It’s like breathing, like exhaling until he can’t exhale anymore, but like exhaling from deep in his stomach, heat gathering and pulsing in his throat, across his left temple, and he can feel the kid like heat and light, and Daniel, and he knows if he pushes out he’ll be able to find everyone else in the hospital, the bright points of Guides and dark pools of Sentinels.

“Okay,” he says, and his voice sounds slow like he’s speaking through molasses. “I’m sending.”

There’s a moment, and then Daniel says, “I’m having trouble getting a measure.”

“Out of your range or you’re not getting anything?”

Okay. Blair opens his eyes, blinking at the sterile brightness of the room. “Let’s switch, see if I can get a measure.”

Stiles looks worried. “What does that mean?”

“Your level might be lower than our level differential. I project at ninety-two, and so if you’re receiving at, say, a six—”

“Or up to a nine.”

“—then the level Daniel is receiving is too high for him to accurately measure.”

“Or?”

It’s almost impossible, but, “Or your level is at least a ninety-two, and so you’re absorbing everything I’m projecting.”

The kid’s eyes look sharp as he stares at Blair for a second, and then he asks, “Which would mean I’m at least as strong as you.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re the strongest recorded Guide in North America.”

“Yes. But chances are it’s the differential issue.”

Stiles rubs his face against his uninjured shoulder. “God, I hope so. So…are we doing this?”

Blair looks at Daniel, who’s watching him. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Daniel closes his eyes, and Blair takes a deep breath and watches Stiles. The kid is staring at him, and this close he’s surprisingly disconcerting, like there’s something behind his eyes that Blair can’t see or feel. In fact, he can’t feel anything, so he asks, “Daniel, are you projecting?”

A second later, Daniel says, “I am.”

And, well, that right there is a problem.

\--

Stiles wants to sleep. Now, preferably, while he’s still on enough pain medication not to dream. Because there’s no way the nightmares aren’t going to start up as soon as he’s drug free. Because he has power again, and power is the last thing he should have.

But his dad and Scott are coming, and the Guide Prime and not-military guy are still there, and he doesn’t know what the hell he’s supposed to do because this was never supposed to happen. He was supposed to be a random midlevel Guide that he could find a two- or three-sense Sentinel (if anyone) to go with. Not be…this.

“Are either of your parents Sentinels or Guides?”

Stiles looks at the Guide Prime. “My dad’s definitely not.”

“And your mother?”

The pain hits like it always does when he thinks about his mom, and he rides it through until he can talk around the stone in his throat. “She’s dead. I don’t know.”

“You’re going to need outside training, then, and you’re going to need to find a Sentinel sooner rather than later.” The Guide Prime sends him a sympathetic look. “As you may know, unbonded Guides have an increased risk of mental illness, a risk that increases with your level. As high a level as you are, this will be a real risk—”

The door opens, and Stiles’s dad walks in; almost on his heels is, “Scott?”

Scott peers around Stiles’s dad, saying, “Hey, Stiles. You know you’re not supposed to get yourself shot, right?”

Stiles laughs. “Yeah, I’ve been working on that. Lydia okay?”

Scott heads around to stand on the other side of Stiles’s bed so he can look at the Guide Prime and Daniel. Which would be okay, but it means that Stiles can’t look at all of them at the same time. “No screaming, so I’m assuming everyone’s still breathing.”

The Guide Prime and Daniel look…something that Stiles isn’t functional enough to process, so he just says, “The good guys, at least. What are you doing here?”

His dad snorts, moving to stand next to Scott. “He threatened to ride all the way here on his motorcycle if I didn’t give him a ride. How are you feeling?”

“Really drugged up. And in pain.” He gestures with his head towards the Guide Prime because he doesn’t want to move his arms because the needle inside of him is still kind of freaking him the fuck out. “This is the Guide Prime of the United States, and…another Guide. The Guide Prime is here because apparently Russian people tried to kidnap us. Us being Guides. Apparently. I’ve lost all of my Russian. I should probably relearn Russian.” He looks at Scott. “Does Lydia know Russian?”

Scott shakes his head, moving his hand to Stiles’s shoulder so he can start pain-draining surreptitiously. Which is awesome. Scott is awesome. “I don’t think so.”

Daniel asks, “You speak Russian?”

Surprisingly, his dad is the one who answers, “His mother taught him. I speak Polish, but not enough to teach.” He offers his hand across Stiles’s bed to the Guide Prime. “John Stilinski. What’s your interest in my son?”

The Guide Prime settles back in his seat. “Were you aware that your son was never registered as a Guide?”

His dad doesn’t flinch, even though, right, that’s illegal and his dad’s a sheriff. “We’ve bad bigger concerns recently.”

No kidding. But the Guide Prime doesn’t look suitably impressed by their plight. “Regardless, I just tested his level, and Stiles is one of the most powerful Guides that’s ever been measured in North America.”

His dad looks at Stiles, then said, “If you’ll excuse us, I need to talk to my son alone.”

The Guide Prime nods. “Of course. We should probably go check to see if Jim and General O’Neill have finished with their pissing match.”

“I should check Jack’s levels again, too.”

Weirdly, his dad stiffens. “Jack O’Neill?”

Daniel looks at him. “You know him?”

“Only tangentially, if this is the same Jack O’Neill that I’m thinking of. There was a Jack O’Neill who I met a couple of times in the First Gulf War before he was MIA, presumed KIA. He was found just before I came home.”

Daniel nods. “It’s the same Jack O’Neil.”

“Go figure.”

The Guide Prime looks at Stiles. “I’ll be in touch with you about training options. It was nice to meet you.” And then he and Daniel head out of the room, shutting the door behind them.

Stiles’s dad looks at Scott. “Can you go check the white noise generator, make sure it’s on to the highest setting?”

Scott nods, giving Stiles’s shoulder a squeeze. “Sure.” He walks around Stiles’s dad, who moves closer to Stiles.

Stiles smiles up at him, and the pain—weirdly muted behind the pain medication but definitely still there—starts to come back. “Hey, dad. Sorry you had to drive down here.”

His dad reaches out to ruffle Stiles’s hair, and it feels nice. “I had to talk the whole pack out of coming down here.”

“Lydia thinks it’s her fault,” Scott puts in from where he’s fiddling with the white noise generator. “Because she made you go to that conference.”

“Lydia didn’t make me do anything,” Stiles says, and it comes out way more mumbly than he was intended. Because he’s tired and things hurt and the day has sucked and he’s pretty sure he lost his water bottle and he’s going to need to buy a new one and that sucks too. “I don’t want to be a super Guide. I don’t want to be a super anything. Me and super don’t go well together, because then I’m playing Go with a demonically possessed dead guy and people start dying.”

And then he falls asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tada. It's the magic of long bus rides.


	3. Chapter 3

Jack is done. Because Davis and Ellison have been getting nowhere, his senses are starting to fluctuate now that Daniel is behind a hospital-grade white noise generator, and he really just wants to get out of here. So finally, over Davis’s protest that the Air Force really does have sole jurisdiction over this, he says, “How ‘bout you share?”

Davis looks at him questioningly. “Sir?”

“Two heads are better than one, right? And seeing as it wasn’t targeting me or Daniel, nothing classified should come up. And you. Ellison. You probably don’t have the capacity for a large-scale investigation. So share.”

“We can—”

“I’ll go to the President with this if I have to, and believe me, he’ll agree.” He lets a hint of a growl enter his voice from deep in his throat. “I want to know who went after my Guide, and I’m not too picky about how it gets done. Now both of you get out. I’m calling Carter.”

Davis hesitates. “General—”

“You can stand right outside the door if it makes you feel better, but I’m telling my wife someone shot at me in private.”

Davis nods. “Yes, sir.”

Once he and Ellison are outside with the white noise generator turned on, Jack pulls out his phone and calls Sam’s SGC number. They stopped letting personal cell phones into the mountain because of the hacking risk, and his number is on a short list of ones that can bypass the switchboard operator.

Sam picks up almost immediately. “Carter.” Something settles in him at the sound of her voice, not like grounding with Daniel but warm.

“I love you.”

Sam makes a noise. “What happened?”

Jack grins despite himself. “Why do you think something happened?”

“Good conversations end with ‘I love you.’ Bad conversations start with it.”

That is actually pretty fair, and of course Sam noticed that. “I’m in a hospital. Someone attacked the conference and tried to kidnap the Guides. Everyone’s fine.”

“Why wasn’t I contacted?”

“Because I’m in the Sentinel wing of a hospital and my Guide is with me.”

“Damn it.” She sighs. “Okay. The Air Force heading up the investigation?”

“In cooperation with the Sentinel Prime. Davis isn’t happy.”

“I can’t blame him. Does this mean you’re not—”

Klaxons go off around her, followed by a gate tech’s announcement of, “Unauthorized off-world activation.”

“I have to go. Love you.” And then there’s a click and she’s gone.

Jack slumps back against the pillow, scrubbing his hand across his face. This is the whole reason he shouldn’t have agreed to go somewhere unsecured with Daniel. Not that that ever mattered, given the number of times Daniel had been kidnapped—or killed—off-world. And now that he’s thinking about that—not a great idea on the best of days—he really needs to hear Daniel’s heartbeat, a reminder that Daniel is still alive, because he isn’t in a great place at the moment, and he probably shouldn’t have let Daniel leave the immediate area but he didn’t want to get in an argument with him.

He’s almost at the white noise generator—and turning it off will make it so he has to listen to the whole goddamn hospital, something he’s not too fond of, but it’ll give him access to Daniel’s heartbeat sooner—when the door opens and Daniel pops his head in. “We have a wrinkle.”

Jack stops, briefly considers grabbing Daniel and escaping through the window with him so they won’t have to deal with any of this shit. But this is nothing compared to the Goa’uld or the Ori or Kinsey, and this shit isn’t going away, so he just suppresses a sigh. “What blew up this time?”

Daniel shakes his head, stepping the rest of the way into the room and closing the door behind him. Jack presses him up against the door without waiting for an answer, dragging Daniel’s head to his shoulder. He needs the touch, the feel of the contour of Daniel’s nose, his cheekbones against his chest, even if it is through a truly awful hospital gown that he’s really in favor of burning as soon as humanly possible. Against his chest, Daniel says, “It’s not that. It’s the kid who was shot.”

Jack runs his fingers through Daniel’s hair, messing it up before letting him go. Daniel straightens, not bothering to fix his hair because he knows Jack will just mess it up again. He needs that mark because he can’t do a real full bonding at the moment. “What about the kid who was shot?”

“He’s apparently at least as strong a Guide as Blair Sandburg.”

Great. Fantastic. Fucking awesome. This time Jack drops his head down on Daniel’s shoulder, even though it’s not a particularly comfortable position. “So what does this have to do with us? It’s not our job to deal with a Guide, no matter how strong he is.”

Daniel’s hand settles on the back of his neck. “Sandburg’s talking about the Guide’s training. Which likely means he’s going to end up trailing the Sentinel and Guide Primes for at least part of this investigation. Do you know how hard keep this secret from two ninety-plus Guides, a five-sense Sentinel, and whoever this Guide’s Sentinel is will be?”

And things just keep getting better and better. “It’s not as though we’re going to be doing the investigation.”

“It’s not as though we won’t be involved.” Daniel sighs. “Are we still planning on going to Colorado Springs?”

Jack straightens out. “Yeah. Unless the President decides to drag me back to DC. If he does that, are you going to be okay alone? Your shields holding?”

Daniel hesitates, then shakes his head. “Ideally, I need another two, preferably three days to settle my shields. I like seeing you, but then I end up under your auspice and need to make myself distinct again before we separate.”

“Great.” Jack claps his hands. “That’s what I’ll tell the President if he comes calling.”

Daniel scowls at him. “Don’t use me as an excuse to the President of the United States.”

“Aww, he loves you.” Daniel stares at him. “Okay, he’s mildly fond of you. How much is this kid going to screw things up, realistically?”

Daniel shakes his head. “If he ends up with a Sentinel, I wouldn’t put him in the same room as anyone from the SGC except the two of us together or—actually, no, just the two of us together.”

“Or?”

“I was going to say Teal’c, but Jaffa were unnerving enough the first time I ran into them, and I’m something like ten points below him. Ideally, keep him away from anyone who knows about the SGC.”

Jack nods. “Fantastic. Now, what do you say we get out of here?”

\--

The Guide Prime left a hand-scrawled (wow, his handwriting is surprisingly terrible) list of instructions for Stiles to follow, as though he hasn’t spent the past eight (nine? How long has it been?) months surviving perfectly well(ish) as a Guide. And it doesn’t really matter anyway, because as long as Stiles doesn’t have a Sentinel, he can’t do shit with his powers. Which is exactly how he wants it.

But apparently he still needs to eat…eight servings of fruit a day. How is he supposed to get that much fruit? And he’s also not supposed to eat processed food, which is ridiculous, because he goes to high school.

The bottom of the note also has a number written down in slightly better but still awful handwriting, followed by “I’ll be in touch.”

Which is not ominous or anything.

But Stiles isn’t going to worry about that at the moment, because they’re almost at his house and he’s fairly certain the entire pack is there. And he kind of doesn’t care, because Scott is pulling a ridiculous amount of pain from him; his body is still processing like it’s in pain, so he has a shit ton of endorphins that are just there, making him feel awesome.

It is slightly possible that he is high on endorphins. Or whatever drugs are in his system. Because he has drugs in his system.

“Yes, you do.”

Stiles blinks over at Scott, who looks funny. Not Scott-funny, but like something is funny and Scott is Scott, and Stiles might be saying some of this stuff out loud. Because Scott has awesome hands. “You have awesome hands.”

His dad coughs. “You have anything you want to tell me?”

Stiles grins at him where he’s driving. “Scott has awesome hands and they make me feel good.”

Scott makes a noise. “We’re not actually—I’m straight. It’s just the pain thing.”

“Uh huh.” His dad looks at him in his rearview mirror. “Anything else, Stiles?”

“I’m not a virgin.”

The car slows slightly, then speeds up again. “Okay, let’s stop having this chat.”

Scott laughs. Stiles tries to shove at him but misses and ends up falling on top of him, suspended by his seatbelt. Which is uncomfortable. Stiles considers sitting up, but it seems like a lot of work, so he just stays there.

Scott sighs, then uses his other hand to pat Stiles on the head.

Liam is hovering outside Stiles’s house with Mason when they get there, and Kira’s car is parked on the street, and they’re missing Lydia and Malia and all Stiles can think is what a sad small pack they have, and how many they’ve lost. Because that’s it, that’s the sum total of their pack, two werewolves and a kitsune and a were-coyote and a Sentinel!banshee and a human, because Mason isn’t even technically pack, and Isaac if he ever came back but that’s not going to happen because there are too many bad memories here and sometimes he doesn’t know why any of them stay.

Except he loves the pack and he loves Beacon Hills and he would just love it more if it could be safe. But that’s kind of something he’s given up hoping for.

Once they get Stiles out of the car, Kira and—hey look—Malia are up to them, and it’s like a very small mob of pack. Malia takes one look at him and says, “You look like shit.”

Stiles nods, shifting away from Scott and his awesome hands so he can think clearly. Scott takes that as an indication that he should go wrap himself around Kira like an octopus. “Gee, thanks.”

Malia grins at him, and it’s all teeth. “Just telling you what I see.”

Kira gives him a sympathetic look. “How are you feeling?”

“My arm hurts.” He shrugs his other shoulder, wishing he could rub at the bruise from where the IV was. The curse of being pale; he bruises at the slightest poke. His legs post-lacrosse practice always look like he got in a fight with a battering ram. “Anything blow up while I was away?”

Kira shakes her head. “There were rumors of an animal spotting, but we’re pretty sure it was actually just an animal.”

“Is it ever actually just an animal?”

“In this case, yes.” Stiles looks over at his dad, who, whoops, Stiles forgot was there. “Let’s move this inside, if you all insist on piling into my house.”

They start to walk inside, and Stiles looks at Kira. “Do you know where Lydia is?”

“I think she’s holed up with Parrish somewhere. You getting shot freaked her out.”

Great. “I should talk to her soon. And Parrish.” Preferably before the Guide Prime decides to start getting involved in his training, because he needs to figure out how to hide the shit in his head from anyone who’s going to come looking for it.

The only problem with that is that Parrish is only something like level seventy-five, which is really high—Lydia’s a four-sense, though the only one that’s really strong is her hearing—but not really comparable to a ninety-two. And he doesn’t really think the Guide Prime is going to go snooping around in his head, but he also has enough shit that he doesn’t want anyone seeing that it is a concern.

Scott nods. “I’ll call her.”

Liam looks at him as they start piling on Stiles’s couch that definitely isn’t big enough for all of them. But Stiles is definitely claiming a spot on the couch. He’s injured. He has an excuse. “Why do you need Parrish?”

Stiles grimaces. “I’m apparently slightly stronger than expected, which is kind of a problem.”

“Why?”

“Why am I strong?”

“Why is it a problem?”

Stiles shifts where he’s wedged between Scott and Liam; Malia is sprawled on the floor against his leg. “Because the Guide Prime of North America has decided to get involved.”

Liam stiffens, but it’s Mason who’s sitting across the room who asks, “Is he going to come here?”

“Not if I can help it.”

Scott shakes his head. “You can’t just leave.”

Stiles scowls at him. “I can’t drag Beacon Hills into my disaster. And I might not get a choice, anyway. There’s no guarantee they won’t drag me out of here to Cascade or wherever to do training.”

“Nobody is dragging you anywhere.” His dad sticks his head in the room. “I’m ordering pizza. Who’s going to be here for dinner?” Everyone sticks their hand up, including Stiles, and his dad sighs and starts to walk away.

“Get some with vegetables,” Stiles calls after him.

“I’m getting meat,” his dad shouts back. “I’m need something to make up for you getting shot.”

“Vegetables will make me happy!”

“Meat will make me happy!”

And then Scott goes back to pulling the pain from his arm, and he doesn’t get to see what pizza his dad orders because he’s asleep by then, curled up against Scott, Liam drawing dicks on his uninjured arm.

\--

“What do you plan to do about the kid?”

Blair flops over on his back in the giant bed they’re sharing in the Sentinel-safe hotel suite near the university where the conference was being held. “What do you mean? I need to train him. With the level he’s at, bonding with no training, he could get fairly hurt—or do a lot of damage—if he doesn’t know how to supplement his Sentinel’s shields.”

Jim shoots him an irritated look, sliding his hand into Blair’s hair. “I know that. But we’re also need to investigate this attack, and we can’t really drag a teenager around in this investigation.”

Jim is right, which is irritating. “We are working with the Air Force, so we don’t need to cover the entire investigation on our own. And you’ve worked in the field without me before since we’ve been bonded. So I can stay back and work with him while you investigate.”

Jim hums a response, hand stroking up and down in Blair’s hair, and Blair closes his eyes, settling into the feeling of his Sentinel grounding on him. At least on the higher levels, when multiple levels of shields are required just to function day-to-day, a Sentinel’s grounding also reinforces the Sentinel-side shields and makes life that much more pleasant. Finally, Jim asks, “Does it bother you, that there’s a kid who’s stronger than you.”

Blair’s eyes pop open. “Are you kidding? I’ve been hoping for someone this strong for years. Having someone to talk to, someone who understands; that would be amazing.”

“Good.” And with that, Jim rolls over on top of Blair, burying his face against Blair’s throat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I still haven't decided on a Sentinel for Stiles (I had a thought, but then people were suggesting I pick someone badass, and I'm such a sucker for the badass overprotective partner that I'm tempted to go in that direction). As you may be able to tell, I don't have this planned super far ahead. 
> 
> As always, if you want to read some of my original work, you can check out 510a.wordpress.com.
> 
> Also, if you want to get in touch with me, you can find me as elumish on Tumblr.


	4. Chapter 4

“The most important thing you need to know, if you’re actually going to try to pull this on anyone, much less on the Guide Prime, is how to build a secondary shield.”

Stiles nods, rubbing at his shoulder. He hasn’t taken any pain medication yet because Parrish said it would get in the way, and his arm hurts like hell. “I’ve done a lot of reading online about making shields.”

Parrish shakes his head. “Most of the information about shields online is about primary shields, the ones you use once you’re bonded to keep out everything that’s going on around you. Secondary shields are ones that you use to keep what’s in your head out of everything else. It’s mostly so stuff doesn’t go spilling out onto your Sentinel”—he glances past Stiles at Lydia, who’s reading a book on game theory—“but it can be used to block out whatever you want to hide from other Guides, too.”

“So how do I do that?”

Parrish grimaces. “It’s hard without having a bond. Frankly, I’m not sure if it’s possible.”

Fantastic. “That’s not helpful.”

“ _But_ , if anyone could do it, it’s someone with a level as high as yours.”

“Whatever it is.”

Parrish’s eyebrows go up. “You said it was in the nineties.”

“Mostly we got ‘at least as high as the Guide Prime’s’, which means at least 92, but doesn’t actually give me a number.” His arm throbs, and he rubs his shoulder just above it. Which does actually nothing to help. “Anyway. It doesn’t really matter. So what do I do?”

“The best way to think about it is taking everything you want to hide and put it under a dome. Now there are a couple of things to keep in mind with this. First, you need to be able to conceptualize what you want to hide, and you have to be selective. If you don’t know exactly what you’re going to hide, things are going to leak through, and if you try to hide large chunks of memories or thoughts, it’s going to be obvious, and whoever’s in your head is going to start poking.”

“And second?”

“Second, a lot of people think of it as sticking things in a box. That’s a dangerous way of thinking about it. Boxes are small, they’re cramped, and they have locks. You stick something in a box, you might not get it out the same way. It might make it worse.”

Wouldn’t that be a hell of a thing, making it worse. “Got it. No boxes, and know what I’m trying to hide. Can do. Maybe.”

 “You ready to give it a try?”

“Now?”

“Now.”

“Give me a few minutes.”

Lydia looks up from her book. “Need me?”

Parrish smiles at her. “I’d prefer you, yes.”

Lydia closes her book with a snap then stands and clicks over to Parrish, dropping down on his lap. He wraps his arms around her waist, burying his face in her neck. Her lips curve into a smile.

And then she looks at Stiles, snapping her fingers. “Come on, get to it.”

Right. Stiles closes his eyes, pulls up the thought of Peter Hale, of the kanima and Jackson, of the Durach and the Nemeton and the nogitsune and Eichen House, and he puts them in one little corner, the bottom of the back right of his skull, and then he drops a dome over it, like that glass jar top with the rose from _Beauty and the Beast_ , the rose with petals falling off, decaying, and they’re like that, too.

“Got it. I think.”

Parrish looks up at him. “We’ll see.” And then he closes his eyes, and Stiles braces himself for…something.

But there’s nothing, just Parrish sitting across his apartment’s lone table, eyes closed, Lydia on his lap examining her nails, and Stiles isn’t sure if he isn’t feeling anything because he’s not bonded or because Parrish isn’t doing anything or because Parrish is doing something really well or because it’s just not something you feel, and it’s really unnerving, and he has no idea how he’s going to be able to spend any extended period of time with the Guide Prime if it’s like this.

And then Peter’s teeth are closing around his wrist, and he jerks out of his chair, biting through his lip in an effort to not start screaming as his injured arm hits the ground. Blood fills his mouth, and he spits it into his hand because you don’t leave blood lying around if you can help it.

By the time he gets his breathing under control, Lydia is next to him, easing his arm out so she can look at the bandaged. “You didn’t split your stitches.” She looks up at Parrish. “What were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t thinking he was going to do that.” Parrish looks over at him. “What did you see?”

“Peter Hale.” Lydia flinches because they’re all still broken, and he touches her shoulder. “What did you do?”

Parrish stands up, heading over to crouch down on the other side of Lydia, putting a hand on the back of her neck. “I was just trying to pull out one of the memories that you were trying to hide. Whatever you did, I could tell you were hiding them, but I could still see them.”

Because he stuck them under something clear. Because he was thinking about it like a glass dome, and so he hid them in something transparent. Which is useless. Fantastic. “Is that going to happen every time someone looks at something I don’t want them to?”

Parrish shakes his head. “Doubtful. I was being pretty aggressive and intentionally hunting for what you were hiding. What’s more likely going to happen is that, when someone is in your head for training, they’re going to run into it. Most Guides are pretty respectful and don’t snoop, but if you’re inside someone’s head, it’s hard not to see things.”

Great. “Okay, let’s try this again.” Lydia pokes him just underneath the bandage, and pain radiates out through his arm, sharp and bright and high. “What the fuck, Lydia?”

“You’re taking some pain medication and”—she presses two fingers to his throat just over his carotid, tilting her head to the side—“taking a break. Your heart rate is really high.”

“I’m fine.”

She scowls at him. “You’re actually not, and that’s fine.”

He pokes at her finger, which is still on his throat. “Why aren’t you just listening?”

“Because people are having aggressive sex upstairs, and if I turn up my hearing anymore I’m going to have to listen to it.” Her eyes narrow. “They’re managing to have both aggressive and boring sex.”

Parrish reaches over to put his hands over her ears. “Stop listening in on my neighbors having sex.”

“I’m—your phone’s going off.”

Parrish pulls his hands away. “Mine?”

“Stiles’s.”

Stiles clamors to his feet, heading over to the chair where his phone is vibrating. Poking the screen with a finger without blood on it, he answers it and then maneuvers it up to the shoulder of his uninjured arm with minimal blood transfer. His lip is still bleeding, which is really annoying, and he wipes away at it with the back of his hand once he gets the phone situated. “Hello?”

“Stiles Stilinski?”

“Yeah?” He has blood in his mouth, and he tries to quietly spit some of it out into his hand.

“It’s Blair Sandburg.”

Fan-fucking-tastic. “How did you get my number?”

It sounds like the Guide Prime laughs a little bit. “I talked to you father. Do you have a few minutes to talk?”

He looks over at Lydia and Parrish, who are back in Parrish’s chair playing happy couple, then says, “Yeah, I have a couple minutes.”

“First, how are you doing?”

Stiles looks at his hand, which is covered in blood, and he’s pretty sure his face looks like he just ate someone raw, and he has to resist the urge to laugh. “I was shot. I’m not dead. Nobody I care about died there. I’m good.”

Apparently that wasn’t quite the answer he was supposed to give, because Lydia looks up at him, and it takes the Guide Prime a full thirty seconds before he says, “Okay. I’m glad to hear that. What I’m actually calling for is to talk to you about your training.”

Yeah, Stiles had figured that. “What about it?”

“We need to schedule a time for you to come to Cascade so we can begin your training.”

That’s not happening. “I’m in high school, so dropping everything and heading to Washington state isn’t really an option.”

There’s another pause, and then the Guide Prime says, “I see. Unfortunately, because of the investigation and because of my responsibilities, I can’t spend an extended period of time outside of Cascade.”

That had really not been Stiles’s intention, because oh god, if he can’t keep Parrish out of his head, they definitely wouldn’t be able to keep him from finding out. “What I actually meant was that now isn’t really a good time for me to start training. Given, you know, high school.”

“I’m afraid if you don’t come to train willingly I’m going to need to make it a legal requirement,” the Guide Prime says, and the asshole has the gall to sound apologetic.

Now Lydia gets up, looking like she’s about to get up and start arguing with the Guide Prime, but Stiles shakes his head, waving her down with his uninjured arm. “You have no authority to do that.”

“Actually, I do. When you bond with a Sentinel, if you are untrained, you have the potential to do a huge amount of psycho-emotional damage to those around you. And as the Guide Prime, I do have the authority to require that you receive training from someone of comparable or higher for the safety of the public.”

Fuck. Stiles shoves his hand through his hair, which was probably a terrible idea because he has blood all over his hand—and now, in all likelihood, in his hair. “In this case, you.”

“If you plan to stay in North America, yes. But I would prefer not to do that.”

Stiles would prefer he didn’t do that, either. But apparently he doesn’t have much of a choice. “Fine. Spring break starts in three days, because it’s really early this year, and I can head up to Cascade then. But it’s only a week long, and then I’m going to have to go back home.”

“We will need to do more than a week of work, but it’s a start.” The Guide Prime sighs. “I really do hope you don’t hate this. This isn’t as much of a chore as you seem to think.”

It’s not the tedium that he’s concerned about, but the fact that the last thing he needs is the ability to have any psychic influence over anyone. He already knows he can do a lot of damage when he has power. But it’s not like he can say that. “If you email me your address, I can drive up there Thursday morning.

“Will you be okay driving with your arm?”

It’s going to suck, but he can do it. “Don’t really have a choice, do I? I’ll text you my email address at this number.” And then he hangs up, which is probably (definitely) rude, but his mouth is starting to really taste like blood, and he doesn’t want to keep having this conversation.

Lydia heads over to him, pulling his phone out of his hand. “I’ll text him your email address. Go get cleaned up. Your face is a mess.”

“I don’t want to do this.”

She grabs his shoulders, turning him around. “Bathroom, then pain medication. I’ll even tell Scott for you.”

“I love you.”

Lydia laughs, pushing him gently towards the bathroom. He goes, because he really does need to get the blood off of…everything. And keep himself from freaking out, because this whole thing is a clusterfuck but he doesn’t want to freak out until he’s alone and can panic in peace.

Looking in the mirror, his lip isn’t bleeding anymore, but the entire lower part of his face is covered in blood, to an almost bizarre degree. It looks like he’s a vampire from one of those shitty B-movies where he just tore into a blood bag.

By the time he gets most of it off, he’s mostly calm(ish), even though he has no idea what the fuck he’s going to do. But he has time. He’ll figure it out.

\--

Blair takes one step into the living room, stops, and considers walking out. “I thought I was supposed to be the one who makes a mess.”

Jim looks up from where he’s sitting on the couch with a truly staggering number of papers and files scattered around him, smiling a little. Or at least an approximation of a smile; Blair can feel his tension, which is why he headed in instead of finishing up working on a lesson plan for the new Guide. But this isn’t what he was expecting to find. “These are all of the suspected Guide traffickers.”

“Do you have any suspects?”

Jim shakes his head, flipping through a file next to him on the couch. “Most of them wouldn’t have the capacity to deal with the number of Guides they were aiming for. North Korea would, but there would be no reason for them for them to use Russians. There are a couple of Triads groups, one of which is operating out of San Francisco, but it’s the same problem, that they would use Chinese gang members instead of Russian paramilitary.”

“What about Russian organized crime?”

Jim stares at him for a second, then leans forward and grabs a file off of the table in front of him, flipping through it. “That’s possible. The group that we have on record tends more towards targeting individual Guides, usually unbonded ones.”

The level of Jim’s tension ratchets up a notch, strong enough that Blair can feel it across his own shoulder blades, and he’s had enough. “Okay, time for a break.”

Jim doesn’t look up from the file he’s reading. “I have another couple dozen of these to get through tonight.”

Blair doesn’t want to pull this card, but reading about Guide traffickers has pulled up Jim’s protectiveness, and if he doesn’t reinforce the bond, it’s going to get worse. “I need you to take a break.”

Jim is on his feet almost before he can put the file down, picking through the mass of paper so he can wrap his arms around Blair, burying his face in Blair’s hair. “What do you need?”

“Bond with me.”

Jim leans down to pick him up, striding down the hall to their bonding room. It’s relatively small, well-cushioned all the way around with Sentinel-safe cushioning. Neither of them are injured or too emotionally unstable, so Jim sets him down on his feet, hands going to the bottom of his shirt. Blair lets him pull it off, then starts on his pants while Jim starts stripping.

They both end up in their boxers, and Jim tosses the rest of the clothing out of the room and closes the door before turning back towards Blair. “Sit.”

Blair sits, and Jim walks around to sit down behind him, pulling Blair back against his chest. It’s a bit of an awkward position for two men who aren’t sexually attracted to each other, and Jim especially had struggled with it in the beginning, sitting that close to another man, but his Sentinel instincts trumped his internalized homophobia and he had gotten over it.

“What sense do you want to start on?”

“Taste and smell.” He moves Blair’s hair out of the way to press his nose to Blair’s throat, his tongue snaking out to drag a line across his skin. This will take a while, Jim smelling and then tasting random points on his skin. It’s not as long as the initial bonding, when the Sentinel smells and tastes—and touches—every square inch of skin that they can get to. That was particularly uncomfortable for Jim, though he had gotten over it.

Blair takes the time to open up some of his innermost shields, the ones that hold him apart from his Sentinel so they don’t spend their lives in each other’s heads, totally unable to function apart from each other. They can be let down while bonding, though, should be so the Guide has a chance to rest and reconnect with their Sentinel.

Instantly, he can feel Jim more clearly, a presence in the top right of his head, and Jim huffs out a breath against the inside of Blair’s elbow. Jim feels like stability, like safety, and he knows some Guides describe the sensations of their Sentinels as being sensory, warmth or the smell of warm dirt, but Jim has never felt that way to him.

“Why are you thinking about other Sentinels during our bonding?”

Blair laughs, bending forward at pressure from Jim’s hand so Jim can start licking his spine. “It’s nothing for you to worry about.”

Jim’s hands close around his waist. “I should be the only one in your head.”

“You are.” Blair starts to reach up to tap his head, but Jim catches his arm, pulling it back down. “You moving on to touch?”

“I just want you to stay still.” He runs a hand up Blair’s ribs, and he’s definitely working on touch, too. “I will kill anyone who tries to hurt you.”

“I know. We’re going to catch them.”

“We have to.” Briefly, Jim presses his forehead against Blair’s bread. “We can’t lose our Guides.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was amazingly productive today (in part because I didn't do other work I should have done). I also made soup and went food shopping, so that's like extra productive.
> 
> I have decided that Ronon won't be his Sentinel for reasons that will be revealed when he meets Ronon (it wasn't working in my head, and I figured out why).


	5. Chapter 5

Cascade, Washington has more people wearing flannel than Stiles has seen outside of a _Supernatural_ episode, with the odd smattering of people in Rainer University sweatshirts. It’s fairly cool out, about 35 degrees, and he has no idea if that’s normal for March but if it is…he supposes it could be worse.

The S/G center is out of the way, up a kind of sketchy winding road—probably so if a Sentinel goes feral they won’t end up rampaging through the town proper—and if there weren’t signs every hundred feet Stiles would definitely not be willing to go up there.

Except, okay, no, that’s a lie. He dragged his best friend into the forest in the middle of the night to find half a dead body, and he went all the way to Mexico to save someone he only kind of liked. He would go up a suspicious road.

There’s a giant parking lot off to one side, and Stiles parks in one of the guest parking spots. It seems kind of pointless to drag his stuff around everywhere because presumably—hopefully—he’s not going to be sleeping in the S/G center for the next week or so, so he just grabs his backpack and leaves his duffel bag full of clothes. Then he heads into the center.

The entrance hall is painted off-white, with LED lighting and floors that don’t click when he walks. The blandness of a Sentinel-safe room. It’s a relatively short room, too, because big open rooms tend to echo too much for hearing-sense Sentinels.

This is going to be a long, claustrophobic week.

The receptionist—a bonded Guide—looks up at him when the door swings near-silently shut behind him. “Hello.” He sees her clock his Guide necklace, because some of the tension leaves her shoulders. “What can I do for you?”

He stops in front of the desk, tapping one finger on it. “I’m here to see the Guide Prime.”

She turns towards her computer, typing something. “Do you have an appointment?”

“Uh, kind of.” He has no idea if the Guide Prime actually set up an appointment. “He told me to show up here today.”

“What’s your name?”

“Stiles. Stilinski. Stiles Stilinski.”

She gives him that look that everyone gives him when they first get his name, then types something else into the computer. “Well, I don’t have anything listed and he’s not here at the moment, but you’re welcome to take a seat over there or, if you’re in empathetic distress, I can show you to a secure room and send either a Guide or a Sentinel to assist you.”

Stiles shakes his head. “No, I’ll just go—” He gestures towards one of the chairs, then heads over and drops down in it. Of course the Guide Prime isn’t fucking there. That’s just the icing on the goddamn shit show cake that is this whole situation.

Before he left, Lydia handed him fifteen pages of Ancient Latin translation work with orders to “practice, so I don’t keep having to do this”, so he pulls that out of his backpack along with a pencil and some headphones. The room is almost oppressively quiet, and he’s never going to be able to work like that.

Music blasting in his ears—with Sentinel-safe headphones, Lydia’s Christmas gift to him that was really a gift to her because her hearing is ridiculously strong and used to fluctuate wildly before she met Parrish—he gets to work.

Despite his relative success in Spanish, Ancient Latin is ridiculously hard, and Lydia has a tendency to explain it as though he already known Modern Latin, which of course he doesn’t, and so he has to do all of it word by word in the least efficient and worst way of translating stuff ever. Most of it is probably going to be wrong, which means he’s going to have fun conversations with Lydia where she tells him he’s horrible at translating and then assigns him another fifteen pages to work on.

And he would refuse to work on them, but the thing is that they really do need someone other than Lydia—and Deaton, when he’s not being a cryptic asshole—who can translate some of their reference books, because if anything happens to her…

It’s not something he wants to think about, but they’ve lost too many people to really have a choice in the matter.

It’s awkward work with his arm hurting every time he moves it, but he gave up on the sling (Beacon Hills and good self-care don’t really go together) the night before, and he can mostly ignore it.

Turning the page, Stiles looks up to stretch his neck—just as there’s a loud crash, and the receptionist goes skidding across the floor beside her desk, scrambling backwards away from the man standing in front of her desk. He’s growling so loud Stiles can hear it even through his headphones; Stiles rips them out of his ears, sticking everything on the chair next to him before jumping to his feet.

Because that Sentinel is feral, and this situation could go really badly, really quickly if someone doesn’t get it diffused.

As soon as Stiles is on his feet, the Sentinel turns towards him, teeth bared, pupils blown wide. Which means he’s not a sight sense, and his eyes are trying to compensate and match whatever senses he has. Which helps him not at all.

“Hey, there.” The Sentinel’s growl gets louder, and Stiles lowers his voice. “Okay. It’d be really great if you stopped throwing people around.”

The Sentinel’s lip twitches. “Name.”

“My name? Stiles.”

“The fuck is a Stiles?”

Hysterical laughter bubbles up in his throat, and he swallows it down because it’s really not helpful at the moment. “A nickname. You want to, um. You want to tell me why you’re so upset? While we’re sharing information.” The growl gets louder again, so apparently they’re not going down that line of questioning. “Or not. That’s cool too.”

The Sentinel starts moving towards him, which is frankly unnerving, and he sticks his hands up—or tries to, because nope, that arm isn’t going up without help. One hand is good enough. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the receptionist hurrying out of the room. “Guide.”

“Yep, I’m a Guide.” Slowly, carefully, he reaches under his shirt with his good hand to pull out the necklace. “See?”

“My Guide.”

Whoa. Okay. No. “I’m not anyone’s Guide. I’m my own Guide.” The Sentinel starts growling again. “So look, I’m not bonded, which means I can’t help you with shielding. You’re going to need someone else to help you with that.”

“Bond.”

“No. Nope. Sorry, but no.”

The Sentinel lunges towards him, and Stiles really fucking wishes he had his baseball bat with him. “ _Bond_.”

“I’m not going to—” The Sentinel takes the last couple of step towards him, pressing right up against Stiles, and panic rises up in him. But he’s not doing this. This isn’t happening. Pressing his hands to the Sentinel’s chest, he pushes—

And the Sentinel drops.

Landing on Stiles’s feet, forehead cracking on Stiles’s knee, and maybe shoving him with his fucked up arm wasn’t a good idea because he’s pretty sure he just popped a couple stitches. And there’s an unconscious guy who shouldn’t really be unconscious on his feet.

The receptionist hurries back in, a couple people behind her, and she stops right in front of Stiles. “What happened here?”

“He passed out. I don’t know.” Stiles presses a hand to his arm, and one of the Sentinels with the receptionist picks her head up.

“There’s blood.”

Stiles shuffles out from under the unconscious guy. “He hit the ground, so he might be bleeding.”

She looks at him. “It’s coming from you.”

Right. “That’s probably the bullet wound in my arm. I’m fine.”

“I’ll take you to the med center.”

That is really the last thing Stiles wants. Because medical centers are either the place where his mother died, the place where they told him he was about to lose his mind, or the place where he almost cut off Derek Hale’s arm. “It’ll stop. Look, I drove all the way up from California because the Guide Prime told me to. If I’m not going to meet with him, I’d really like to not be here.”

The Sentinel takes a step towards him. “Blair’ll be here in a few minutes; he had a meeting with the Air Force. I’d really like to take you to the medical center now.”

“I’m _fine_.”

“If I can smell the blood, every other Sentinel who has enhanced smelling will be able to, as well. And blood is one of the smells we’re trained to associate with danger, so it’ll agitate all of those Sentinels.” She sends him a sympathetic look. “I know it’s unpleasant, but we really do need to get that cleaned up.”

Great. “Fine.” Reaching over, he grabs his stuff with his good arm, slinging his backpack up on one shoulder. “Do you know why this guy passed out?”

The receptionist crouched down over him shakes her head. “His adrenaline levels may have just dropped; they tend to peak and then drop rapidly during feral episodes. We’ll move him to a secure room and help work him down to stability.”

So hopefully Stiles’s magic Guideness didn’t break the guy. The Sentinel makes an impatient gesture at Stiles, and he gives in and follows her down a couple of equally bland hallways to an equally bland medical center. If he has to spend this much time in off-white rooms, he’s going to go crazy.

“You can stick your stuff over there.” She gestures with her head towards a chair off to the side. “Your sweatshirt, too.”

Stiles strips his sweatshirt off, which requires some maneuvering so he doesn’t need to get his arm over his head, then it down with his backpack and the papers and phone on the chair. There’s definitely blood spotting his bandage, which means that he probably should have it be dealt with. He’s gotten remarkably good at sewing himself back together, which is both useful and horrifying, but he has a feeling they wouldn’t be too happy with that.

“I’m Stiles, by the way.”

The Sentinel smiles at him, snapping on blue gloves. “I’m Jesse. Dr. Simon if you’re being formal, but let’s not.”

“I’m assuming that’s MD, not PhD.”

“It’s actually an MD-PhD, with a research focus on Sentinel/Guide medicine. I studied under Blair—the Guide Prime—for a time.” She moves towards his arm, telegraphing the whole way. “I need to check your arm, which means I’m going to need to touch you. Between my gloves and your unbonded status, there should be little backlash from the touch.”

“I’ve never had a problem with touch from a Sentinel.”

“No? That’s good.” She unwraps the bandage from his arm, then tsks and starts fussing with it. And this is the stuff he doesn’t want to look at because he’s still not a huge fan of his own blood, no matter how much of it he’s seen. “You okay?”

“Not a huge fan of this part.”

Her fingers prod at his arm, which hurts. “Do you have to go through this a lot?”

“More, uh—more than I would like.”

“Is someone hurting you?”

Stiles laughs, even though it’s really not funny. “I’m not an abuse victim. My town has just gone through some stuff in the past couple few years. Like murders. And animal attacks.”

“Animal attacks?” She starts rebandaging his arm, which involves no blood or inside-of-his-body-ness, so he turns to watch.

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” Jesse finishes securing the bandage, then turns away, pulling off her gloves. “I’m hesitant to offer you pain medication because I don’t know what they have you on—”

“No, I’m good. I took some stuff a while ago, and if I’m going to be meeting with the Guide Prime, I should probably be clearheaded.”

“You can call him Blair, you know. We all do.”

“I really shouldn’t.”

“You really should.”

Jesse doesn’t react at the sound of the Guide Prime’s voice, which means that she definitely heard him coming, but Stiles has to swallow down a yelp. Which is dignified. “Mr. Guide Prime.”

The Guide Prime grins at him. “See, doesn’t that sound weird? I heard what happened, and I’m sorry I couldn’t be here earlier. How are you doing?”

Stiles resists the urge to rub his newly bandaged, aching arm. “I’m fine. Can we just get on with whatever this—ow—” He had started gesturing, which hurts a lot more with a partially-healed bullet hole in his arm. “Can we get on with this?”

“I’ll get you set up in a minute. Jesse, thanks for your help. Kelly wants to talk to you about the feral Sentinel who came in; he seems to be responding oddly to the secure room.”

Jesse nods, tapping on the Guide Prime’s arm before heading out of the room. He smiles at her, then turns to Stiles. “She can only get away with touching me like that because she’s a doctor.”

“Doesn’t that seem a little abusive to you? I mean, your Sentinel gets to dictate who can touch you, where you can go, what job you can do?”

The Guide Prime’s expression shifts to something contemplative. “Is that what you’re afraid of, why you don’t want to train your Guide abilities?”

Not really, but it’s a decent excuse. “Kind of. I’m seventeen, and I’m not willing to give up my home and my friends and my dad for some random five-sense Sentinel I don’t know who’s already been recruited by the CIA or whatever to run operations out of Albania.”

“I doubt the CIA is running many operations out of Albania.”

“Afghanistan, then. Or Syria. Even better.” Stiles shoves his good hand through his hair. “I’m here, aren’t I? I’ll do the training.”

“You will need to get over your fear of learning to be able to accomplish anything.”

Great. So he won’t accomplish anything at all. Problem solved.

\--

Jonathan has no idea why he ever decided getting his PhD was a good idea. Or, in this case, working towards his PhD, seeing as he hasn’t actually managed to get it yet. Something about being more helpful to the Stargate program if he has a PhD in war studies to have an excuse for his dozens of years of actual practical knowledge.

He has a feeling it’s as much about keeping him out of the way as anything else. And frankly, he can’t blame Jack, though it’s still pretty annoying.

“How far have you gotten through the translation of the Russian documents?”

Jonathan leans back in his chair, shoving a hand through his hair and looking at his thesis advisor. “I still have another few dozen to get through. My Russian is rusty, and half of this stuff is illegible. You sure nobody has translated this stuff already?”

“Not and made it accessible to you poor unfortunate PhD candidates.” Professor Riley sits on the edge of Jonathan’s desk, and honestly, he still can’t believe he has a desk of all things. One he actually uses. “I could put you in touch with a translator if you want.”

Jonathan shakes his head. “No, I’ll get through it. Need to save my grant money for stamps for my FOIA requests. I know this shit; I just need evidence of it.”

“Just remember, your dissertation isn’t just about finding evidence to support their theory.”

“I know.” Jonathan snorts. “If it was, I would have been done with this two years ago.”

“You started this two years ago.”

“Yeah.” Jonathan tosses his pen onto his pile of marked up Russian documents; it rolls off the desk and onto the floor.

“I’m not picking that up.”

“I have more.” He picks up another one from his desk, starts fiddling with it. “Why does anyone ever put themselves through this?”

Professor Kelly laughs. “You’re putting yourself through it.”

“That’s because someone talked me into it, and I’m too young to retire.”

“Retire? You’re only, what, twenty-five?”

“Something like that.” He looks at his watch, then groans. “I have to go run office hours in a few minutes. Can all of this just be translated by the time I get back?”

“Only if you take it with you.”

“Right.” Jonathan stands and stretches, hearing his back crack. “Well, time to go. I’ll see you later.”

“Bye.”

Whistling, hands stuffed in his pockets, Jonathan O’Neill heads out of the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Timeline-wise, Fragile Balance was set in 2003, and I'm pretending Clone!Jack was stuck in freshman year of high school. He did four years of high school, four years of undergrad, two years of grad school, and is now working on his PhD. I know it's not necessary to do a masters before a PhD, but it's the easiest way to have the timeline work without having him be like five years into his PhD.


	6. Chapter 6

The Guide Prime takes Stiles to a room that’s just as claustrophobic as the rest of the center, with the only reprieve to the squishy off-white walls and floor two dark purple cushions sitting on the floor. He shuts the door after Stiles walks in, then gestures to the cushions. “Take a seat.” Stiles sits down on one of the cushions, legs sprawled out in front of him because otherwise it’s a little too disconcertingly reminiscent of sitting on that goddamn tree, and Blair sits on the other one. “First off, this is what’s known as a secure room. We have six of these in the center; they’re used for Sentinels who are zoning in such a way that being in medical would be counterproductive or who are feral, as well as for Guides in empathetic distress. It’s soundproofed and all air is filtered before it comes in; additionally, the walls contain a special lining that prevents empathetic leakage in or out. Any questions?”

“Yeah. If Sentinels need all of this bland, off-white, filtered stuff, how can any of them function in war zones?”

The Guide Prime looks at him for a second, then says, “All military Sentinels are trained in what’s known as Danger-Keyed Counterzoning. Essentially, they can train their body to recognize dangerous situations and temporarily process sensory inputs well above their zone level.”

Huh. That makes sense. “Why don’t all Sentinels learn that, then?”

“Because it’s difficult and people using DKC can experience a severe backlash following the situation if they’re not talked down properly.”

Huh. Maybe, if anything, that’s something he can learn, see if it works on Liam or whoever the next random teenage werewolf with angers issues is.

“If you have no other questions,” the Guide Prime says, “we’re going to start on meditation. While I recommend meditation for all Guides—and all Sentinels—it is most important for Guides who are in the eighties or higher. There are a few reasons you need this. The first, and main, one is that Guides need to have stable and organized minds. That’s where our power comes from, our mind, and if we don’t have organized minds, our powers will be a mess. This is also time to work on your shields, which is of the utmost importance for you because you’re strong enough that bonding could be highly traumatic for those around you if you don’t have properly constructed shields. Also, hopefully, you will be able to see your animal.”

“This stuff about my powers, though—I’m unbonded. Doesn’t that mean I’m not going to be able to use my powers yet, anyway?”

The Guide Prime shakes his head. “At the level we are, there’s some amount we can access even while unbonded.”

What? “Why didn’t I know that?”

He smiles. “Do you know how many Guides there are known to be over level 90 in the world?”

Stiles shrugs. “Thirty?”

“Eight.” He claps his hands, the sound being swallowed up by the room. “Meditation time; you’re not going to be able to keep avoiding it.” Stiles hadn’t been avoiding meditation, not actively, so he just pulls his legs in so he’s sitting cross-legged—not super comfortable in jeans, but he had done worse things—and closes his eyes. “You’re going to want to breathe deeply, taking air in through your nose and to your diaphragm for as long as you can, then hold it for as long as you can—”

“I know how to meditate.” It had been one of the dozen or so things he had attempted for particularly bad days ADHD-wise, with varied levels of success.

“Okay.” And then the Guide Prime shuts up, which is awesome, because there’s no way he’s going to get anything done with someone talking to him.

Relaxing his shoulders, Stiles sets his hands in his lap and starts to breathe. He’s not good at thinking about nothing—the ADHD makes that virtually impossible—so he’s found the trick for him is to focus on one thing and try not to think about anything else. There’s so much going on, so much he doesn’t want to think about, so much he’s afraid of, and he doesn’t want to think about that—doesn’t want to think about Beacon Hills—so instead he goes back to his glass jar.

They had never tried again, him hiding all of that shit from Parrish, because he wasn’t willing to risk seeing Peter Hale again, because he was done with that and he wasn’t going back to that place again. So now he needs to turn it into something that isn’t transparent, something that will be opaque but not draw attention to itself.

Something dark, maybe, stick it in a corner and cover it in shadows and pretend it’s not there. Make a dome out of brain matter, maybe that’ll match, except the way he sees the inside of his head isn’t like a brain, so something smooth. A nice dark-grained wood, like an upside-down salad bowl, and he can just stick all the shitty things underneath it and shove it out of the way and pretend it doesn’t exist.

It’s a nice idea, that, of just sticking everything he hates under something else in his head and pretending it never happened. Pretending he never got Scott bitten by a werewolf, pretending Allison and Erica and Boyd never died. And he knows pretending didn’t make it go away, but he goes days without sleeping sometimes, they all did, all except Liam, and he might not always like that kid but he will protect his innocence to the end of the earth.

But right now he’s not in Beacon Hills, and he can afford to not think about it for a while. The real question is if he can manage it.

A hand lands on his shoulder, and he jerks his eyes open to see a tree stump in the middle of the floor, impossibly wide, roots snaking out in all directions, and he scrambles to his feet, almost tripping over himself in an effort to keep from stepping on one of the roots. The Guide Prime looks up at him from where he’s sitting on the floor, and he can’t see it, he _can’t see it_ , it’s not real, and Stiles forces himself to take a breath. Because it’s not really, but it apparently also really doesn’t want to go in a small dark corner of his mind.

“Are you okay?”

No. “I’m fine.” Stiles makes himself look away from the tree, because it’s not there, there’s nothing there. “What’s going on?”

The Guide Prime climbs to his feet, shaking out his legs. “You weren’t responding when I said your name. We’ve been meditating for close to an hour.”

Wow. Stiles had never managed to do that before, though he also hadn’t tried any sort of deep introspection since Eichen House aka a truly miserable way to emerge.

He realizes his hands are shaking, and he jams them in his pockets. “I’m going to go—”

Without bothering to finish the sentence, he walks as fast as he can out of the room, avoiding the tree while trying to look like he’s not walking around something that’s not there. The door is heavy as hell, probably to keep all of the non-filtered air, but he yanks it open with his good arm. The second he’s out of the room, he starts running through the hallway, past the receptionist and out the door, and he doesn’t care if he looks crazy but he just needs out of the building.

The air is cold, outside, his breath puffing out like fog, and he slumps back against the wall of the center, scrubbing his hand across his face. This is such a clusterfuck. He is such a clusterfuck. And he’s not going to be able to do this, because introspection and untreated likely-PTSD don’t go together super well.

A lot of things don’t go well with PTSD.

This doesn’t go well with PTSD. Because if the Guide Prime is right and he’ll be able to do stuff without bonding with a Sentinel—his main plan for not being able to fuck up the world with whatever might be left of the tree in his head—then this whole thing is going to go to hell because he shouldn’t ever be given power, not again. Because he doesn’t trust what’s in his head.

“You okay, kid?”

Stiles flinches, lifting his head up to see a large white guy standing a couple feet in front of him, hands open and loose at his sides like he’s trying to prove he’s harmless. Sentinel, though, he’s guessing bonded from the age, and he looks familiar, like Stiles has seen his face before. “Yeah. I’m fine. I’m good. Sorry, am I in front of the door?” The guy looks next to Stiles, at, right, the door. Dumb question. “Never mind. I’m, uh, I’m fine.”

“You’re the one Blair’s training.”

It’s not a question, but Stiles nods anyway. “Yeah. Were you—”

The man almost smiles. “I’m his Sentinel.”

Stiles stiffens, because oh, fuck. “Mr. Sentinel Prime. Sir.”

“It’s Jim, not sir. You seen Blair yet?”

“I, uh—we meditated. We did meditation. There was sitting.” God, he sounds like such an idiot. “I needed air.”

The smile grows. “Blair can be a bit overwhelming if you’re not used to him. And he’ll have you meditating a lot, so be ready for that.”

“I guessed that.” His skin is start to feel clammy-cold, because it’s kind of fucking cold out for him to only be in a sweatshirt with fear-sweat soaking his skin. His hands aren’t shaking anymore, which is a start. He’s definitely going to call Scott tonight so he can talk to someone with whom he doesn’t need to pretend everything is okay.

“You want to go inside?” Jim asks. “I have junk food.”

“I thought I was supposed to only eat organic free range fruits and vegetables.”

“Yeah.” Jim smirks at him. “So am I.”

Okay, then. If the Sentinel Prime can openly ignore the ruling from the Guide Prime, Stiles can probably get away with it, too. Not that he’s been eating like that—at least not more than usual, given that he tries to cook healthy food for his dad—but it seems like when he’s stuck with the Prime Pair he should follow the rules. Or, apparently, not.

“Sure. Junk food sounds good.”

Jim opens the door, and Stiles follows him in. Which, if nothing else, is probably just as well because his backpack is still in the medical center. With the Latin translation, something he really doesn’t want to lose. Lydia might not let him come back without it.

The receptionist greets Jim with a smile and thankfully doesn’t comment on Stiles’s having run out earlier. “Blair’s in his office if you’re looking for him.”

Jim shakes his head. “I figure I’ll give the kid a break from meditation for a while.”

The receptionist turns her smile on Stiles. “Wait until he gets you on visualization exercises.”

“To visualize my animal?”

She nods. “He makes bonded pairs work on manifesting ours, but we need to be able to visualize them first, and he tends to start that pre-bonding.”

“How long does it take to learn how to manifest it?”

The receptionist shrugs. “No idea. I haven’t managed it yet. Only maybe half a dozen pairs that I know have.”

Huh. “Well, something else to look forward to.” Alongside meditation he might have to start faking so he doesn’t keep hallucinating the goddamn tree.

“Are you from Cascade?” she asks. “Blair doesn’t personally train that many unbonded Guides anymore.”

Apparently the Guide Prime hasn’t told everyone about the new super-Guide. “No. I, uh—I was at the attack a few days ago. I was the one who got shot.” He waves his injured arm a little, which he immediately decides was a terrible idea because his pain medication is wearing off and that hurts like hell. “I’m from California.”

“Well, we’re glad to have you here.” She looks at Jim. “I don’t know if Blair told you, but a Sentinel came in feral about an hour and a half ago. He’s relatively stable at the moment, but they’re going to need you to check on him at some point.”

Jim nods. “Will do. Did he go after anyone?”

The receptionist looks at Stiles, and so does Jim. Stiles sighs. “I’m fine, though. He passed out.”

“He—huh.” Jim looks vaguely speculative for a second, and then the expression clears. “Okay, I promised you junk food. Let’s go.”

“Blair’s going to yell at you for corrupting him.”

“I think I’ll survive.” He starts down the hallway, and Stiles hurries after him, trying to surreptitiously hold his arm so it’s not obvious it’s throbbing. There is a possibility he’s spent too much time around people where showing them weakness means they’re more likely to try to kill him. Aka Peter Hale. And Kate Argent. But mostly Peter Hale. And has a feeling that’s not something he’s going to train himself out of any time soon.

They end up in a small room with a desk and a couple chairs; Jim heads around to the back of the desk to grab a bag of potato chips out of a drawer and open it. “Now that it’s open it, we have to finish it, or I’ll be able to smell it for the rest of forever.” He leans against the desk, offering the bag to Stiles. He takes a chip, and they spend a couple minutes just sitting there eating potato chips. And then Jim asks, “So, kid, how’s your arm?”

Stiles looks at his arm, which has settled into a dull throb. “It’s fine.”

“Want to try that again, remembering that I can smell your pain and hear when you lie.”

Right. Goddamn Sentinels. He hasn’t been able to lie to Lydia in a long time, though that’s as much because of her being Lydia as because of her being a Sentinel. “It hurts.”

“You don’t smell like pain medication.”

“It wore off.” He starts to rub his arm, then forces his hand down into his lap. “I’m fine.”

“I know that people say pain medication lowers shields and makes it easier for Guides to get into your head, but nobody here will be invade your thoughts without your permission.”

Right. “I don’t think it counts as invasion if it’s consensual. Like sex. Nobody calls consensual sex an invasion.”

Jim gives him a flat look. “Take your pain medication, kid. You’re not here to torture yourself.”

He kind of is, but he’s not going to say that. “Fine, I’ll take it.”

“You don’t need to sound like I’m dragging you over spikes by making you take your medication.”

Yeah, he’s definitely going to need to work on his lying, because what he’s thinking shouldn’t be this obvious, even to a Sentinel. But he’s in pain and half-triggered and a mess, and he really doesn’t want to be here. “By the way, are there any motels in the greater Cascade area? I was having trouble finding them online and figured someone here would probably be able to give me the address for one.”

Jim cocks his head to the side. “I think Blair was planning on you staying with us; we own the apartment building, or the Prime estate does at least, so we can host half a dozen Sentinels or Guides at a time.”

Staying with the Prime Pair? That’s going to be such a nightmare, because there won’t be anywhere to fucking hide. And he really needs to hide. “Any chance I can stay at a motel instead?”

“He’s going to insist.”

Of course he is. Fantastic.

There’s nothing more to say, so Stiles eats a handful of chips instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It will get happier, I promise (and then unhappy again, but c'est la vie).


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To clarify the timeline slightly (because I'm good at stuff like that, and also just found a timeline for Teen Wolf), this is actually set about a month and a half after the end of Season 4 of TW, so it's March of their junior year.

Stiles spends most of the rest of the day reading up on Guide theory, which is preferable to whatever other shit the Guide Prime is going to want him to do this week—and he likes theory. Theory is why stuff words, and if you know why you can make it work the way you want to.

There’s also not a ton of it, or at least not a ton of it that the Guide Prime gives him that he hasn’t read already, so by four he more or less done—or as done as he’s going to get at the moment—and moves on to his homework, because he has no idea how long this productive streak is going to last.

He knows he should probably eat something other than chips at some point, but he has no idea where food is, and also he’s not being an incredibly functional human being at the moment because he’s drained and exhausted and mostly just wants to hide until the feeling of the tree goes away. He should never have tried to mess with it, but he did, and now he mostly just wants to sit alone in a corner with his hood up and never deal with anyone else ever again.

Or maybe just Lydia. Because she’s awesome. Or Scott. Because he’s Scott.

There’s a knock on the door sometime around five, and Stiles unfolds himself from the chair to ask, “Yeah?”

The door opens, and the Guide Prime sticks his head in. “Hi. I realized—well, Jim told me—that I never actually told you that the plan is for you to stay with us for the week.”

“Yeah, Jim told me that.”

“Great.” He steps all the way into the room, closing the door behind him. “I realized I may have been pushing a bit hard, and I was reminded that you’re young and this is new to you.”

Awesome. Now he’s going to get the ‘I’m going to figure out how to coddle you because you’re a child while still managing to fucking you over’ spiel. “I’m fine.”

The Guide Prime gives him a sympathetic look. “You had a panic attack earlier. I’m not sure why, but I figure it probably has something to do with what we were working on. And I can’t let you off on the training, but if you would like to talk about it, you can talk to me.”

And there it is. “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

He’s really not fine, and he really doesn’t want to talk about it with the Guide Prime. “Does doing this training mean I give up all of my privacy? Because I’m pretty sure I didn’t sign up for that.” Not that he signed up for any of this.

The Guide Prime stares at him for a long moment then says, “No, it doesn’t mean that. Though I would like you to trust me eventually.”

“Yeah, maybe once you stop dragging me to Washington State against my will.” His tone is sharp, sharper than he wants, and he takes a second to breathe. “Sorry.”

“No, I understand.” He sighs. “Jim and I are going to head home in a few minutes. You can either follow us or I can give you the address.”

Stiles doesn’t want to keep sitting in this sterile building, so he stands, gathering his papers up. “I’ll follow you.”

The Guide Prime’s expression brightens. “Great.” He heads back towards the door. “We’ll meet you in the lobby.”

“Okay.” The Guide Prime heads out of the room, Stiles watching him go.

Great.

\--

Blair slumps against the wall as soon as he walks into Jim’s office, letting out a small breath. Jim looks up at him. “What’s wrong?”

“He hates me.”

Jim gets to his feet, heading over to stop in front of him. He puts a hand on Blair’s cheek, and Blair relaxes as their connection strengthens, the feeling of Jim growing in his head. “He doesn’t hate you, Chief.”

“There’s so much anxiety and so much answer, and much of it is directed at me. Maybe I shouldn’t have made him come up here, if he’s going to fight every step of the way.”

“You said it yourself: he needs to learn, and you’re one of the only ones who can teach him.”

Blair sighs. “I know. I just wish he wasn’t so afraid of learning.” He shoves his hair out of his face. “We should get going before Stiles decides to leave without us.”

Stiles is waiting in the lobby when they get out, curled defensively around his backpack that’s resting on his good shoulder. He looks up when they walk in. “I figured you should probably give me the address anyway, just in case I get lost. Also, is the Sentinel who came in earlier, the one who was feral, is he okay? I didn’t, like, break him or something, right?”

It takes Blair a second to figure out what Stiles is asking, and then he remembers that Kelly said the Sentinel dropped when the kid had pushed him away. “Doubtful. What’s more likely is that physical contact with you caused him to zone.”

Stiles narrows his eyes. “Earlier they told me his adrenaline ran out.”

If this is a test, Blair is pretty sure he’s failing, and that’s not a feeling he likes to have. “In truth, it could be any number of factors. The two that you’ve been told are the most likely explanations. He’s still sleeping off his feral episode, so we haven’t been able to talk to him yet. But his vital signs are normal, and he should be fine once he wakes up.”

After a moment, Stiles nods. “Okay.” He straightens a little, shifting his backpack and wincing a little.

Blair isn’t going to push on the pain medication, not right now, so he just smiles and says, “Let’s go.”

Stiles stays with them through the drive, though Blair isn’t sure how much of that is his ability to follow and how much of that is the GPS. Either way, he’s almost directly behind them when Blair pulls into the apartment parking lot; Stiles in one of the guest spots reserved for visiting Sentinels and Guides.

Blair leads him to one of the first floor rooms mostly so he doesn’t need to carry his stuff—his stuff that he won’t let Blair or Jim help carry—up the stairs. They only have a couple non-permanent Sentinels and Guides there at the moment, but they’ve all been there for a while, so there’s not going to be a communal meal. Instead, he invites Stiles to come up to their apartment for dinner.

By the time Stiles gets up to the apartment, he looks vaguely better, not quite as pale—he had been almost gray earlier—with his hair up in spikes like he ran wet hands through it. He stops in the doorway of the apartment, rubbing under his arm, shoulders hunched.

“Do you need any help?”

Blair looks up from where he’s sautéing a pan of vegetables, with Jim leaning against the counter next to him. “No, I got this. Thank you.” He nudges Jim’s leg. “Go set the table.”

Stiles takes a few step into the apartment, hands shoved in his pockets. “I can help with that.”

“That’s okay.” Stiles’s shoulders hunch a little bit more. “Actually, could you come over here?”

Stiles walks over, Jim patting him on the shoulder as he walks past. He stiffens a little, and there’s no fear, which is good because otherwise Blair would think the kid was being abused with the way he reacts to touch. “What’s up?”

“I wanted to let you know that we are going to have to ask you some questions, things I didn’t get a chance to ask during the initial registration. I can do it now or I can do it later back at the center, whichever you’re more comfortable with.”

He sighs. “Now is fine. Might as well get it over with.”

Blair pokes at the vegetables for a second, then says, “One thing I don’t understand is your reluctance in all of this.”

Stiles shoves his hand through his hair, making it even messier. “With great power comes great responsibility, right?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t want great responsibility. I’m seventeen, I have enough responsibility, and I’m going to be stuck with this thing hanging over me for the rest of my life. Another thing. And seriously, that’s not my idea of a good time. Your vegetables are burning.”

“What?” Blair blinks at him for a second, then realizes what he said and looks down to see that, shit, the vegetables are burning. He scrambles to turn off the heat, moving the pan to another burner. “Thanks. This is it, so you can go sit down.”

“I’m all for vegetables as much as the next guy, but…”

“There’s roast chicken and bread as well.” He shews Stiles over towards the table, where Jim has laid out three place settings. He and Jim sit down next to each other because it’s easier for everyone if they can have easy access to physical contact with each other if necessary, and he gestures for Stiles to take the chair across from him. “Please, sit.”

Stiles drops down in the chair, and Jim starts reaches over to grab his plate and start shoveling food onto it. Once all of the plates have food on them, Jim gestures with his chin towards the food. “Eat.”

“Unless—do you say grace? Or have another pre-meal tradition?”

Stiles shakes his head. “Not particularly religious.” He picks up a fork and pokes at a piece of pepper. “Thanks for the food.”

They start eating, and Blair waits a few minutes before saying, “So, tell us about yourself. What are you studying in school?”

Stiles shrugs, swallowing. “I mean, it’s high school, so it’s mostly just the standard stuff, math, history, English. Science.” He makes a face. “I play lacrosse.”

“Do you have any plans for college?”

“I’m still a junior, so not really. I mean, yes, I want to go to college, and hopefully I’ll be able to get scholarships and financial aid so I’m not, like, a hundred thousand dollars in debt by the time I graduate. But I don’t know where I’m going to go, yet, other than California. Or, I guess, nowhere, depending on if I end up with a Sentinel before then.”

“Having a Sentinel doesn’t mean you can’t go to college.”

He rolls his eyes, poking at a piece of chicken with his fork. “How many unbonded five-sense Sentinels are there in the country? A hundred? Maybe? And almost all of those are adults who have jobs and lives and aren’t going to want to uproot everything so a seventeen-year-old can go to college. Eighteen-year-old. Whatever.”

“The bonding goes both ways, and you wouldn’t have to pick anyone who would object to you going to college.”

“Except for the first, what, six months that we’re bonded, year that we’re bonded, we won’t be able to spend that much time apart, right? So unless I’m bonded to another student with the exact same schedule than mine or to a professor who teaches all of my classes, that wouldn’t work. I have another year of high school to get through that couldn’t happen if I ended up with a Sentinel.” He drops the fork down on his plate. “I’m assuming you don’t want to argue about this, so…what are the registration questions you have for me?”

Blair wants to keep pushing, because bonding really isn’t about the Guide giving everything up for their Sentinel, but he’ll let it go for now. “First, I need to know where, when, and under what circumstances you emerged.”

Stiles grimaces, and there’s a rush of pain so strong Blair almost chokes on it, reaching out to grab on to Jim’s leg to ground himself. But when he talks, his voice is calm, almost impersonal. “It was the beginning of November. I wasn’t really paying that much attention to…dates at the time. I was in Eichen House at the time.” One corner of his mouth quirks up a little, but the sense of pain doesn’t abate. “A ‘mental health’ facility.”

“Do you know what happened there that led to your emergence?”

“Yeah.” His voice goes flat. “Someone tried to kill me.” He stabs a piece of chicken and sticks it in his mouth.

And with that, question time is over.

\--

“Come on.” Ellie shoves at Jonathan’s shoulder, and he lets himself be rocked back, exaggeratedly rubbing his arm. “Oh, screw off. It didn’t hurt that much.”

“I don’t know.” He smirks at her. “I am a poor helpless unbonded Sentinel. You could have damaged me irrevocably.”

She laughs, pulling her hair out of its ponytail to start braiding it over her shoulder. “Yeah, see. So you should come to the S/G meeting with me tomorrow. Maybe you’ll find a Guide to bond with.”

Jonathan resists the urge to grimace at her. “I’m not going to find a Guide at a college S/G meeting.”

“You might.”

“I’m a five-sense Sentinel, Ellie. You have any eighty-plus Guides in your group.”

Ellie scowls at him. “No. But still, one might show up. Come _on_ , Jonathan. When was the last time you spent time with Guides? Or people?”

“I’m spending time with you right now.”

“Yeah, because we’re both TAs.” Her expression turns serious. “Really. Come on. Just once. It’ll be fun. And if you don’t like it, I won’t bother you about it again.”

“Fine.”

“Great.”

“Just tell me there’s going to be cake.”

\--

Stiles drops down on the _weirdly sterile, god he hates this place_ bed in the apartment room the Guide Pair stuck him; he should brush his teeth and do all of the rest of the shit suggested for sleeping, but getting up seems like too much work. Instead, he pulls out his phone, calling Scott.

As it rings, he gets to work unlacing his shoes and kicking them off across the room. He flops over onto the pillow, ending the call once Scott’s voicemail picks up. He could try again, but Scott is probably with Kira which means he’s not going to pick up.

Instead, he sticks his headset in the phone, calls Lydia, and drops his phone next to him so he doesn’t have to hold it up to his head. He needs to take his pain medication again, but he’ll do that right before he goes to sleep.

She picks up almost immediately with, “You finish the Latin translations yet?”

“Nice to talk to you, too, Lydia.”

She laughs, and he hears Parrish’s voice behind her, though he can’t make out what he’s saying. “I’ll take that as a no. What do you need?”

“You wouldn’t believe I just want to talk?”

“Not when you sound like that, I wouldn’t.”

Right. Sentinel. “I just need to talk to someone who isn’t trying to pry my whole life story out of me, and Scott is off making out with Kira or whatever.”

Lydia makes a noise. “Last I heard, Scott was locked in his room trying to get wasted.”

“Why would he—fuck, tomorrow is four months.” He drops his good arm over his eyes. “Oh, fuck, I can’t believe I forgot.”

“Yeah, well, I at least have been trying really hard not to think about it.” She tsks. “We can do something for six months. I’m not doing something for four.” And she sounds callous, so callous, but that’s just how she deals, and he can’t blame her, because Allison was her best friend, and she lost Jackson, she lost Allison, and she has Parrish but Stiles knows it’s not the same. Because they keep losing people, Erica and Boyd and Aiden and Allison and Jackson’s in England and Isaac’s in fucking France and Ethan and Derek are fuck knows where, and Stiles can’t go away, too. He can’t do that to them.

Stiles let out a breath. “Are we supposed to stop counting at some point? You know, all these deaths, all these anniversaries? Do we just light a candle every day once we get up to that point? And we don’t even know when—” He chokes off what he was saying, because goddamn it, but he’s sick of this.

“Light a candle?”

“My mom grew up Jewish…ish. Her family came over from Eastern Europe during the October Revolution—or the February Revolution, whichever. My dad’s family did, too, but they came from Poland, and at the turn of the century. I mean, neither of them practice, but there’s a thing where you light a candle on the anniversary of the person who died.” Stiles rubs his eye. “Except it’s supposed to be the anniversary on the Hebrew calendar, and I don’t know what that is, because I’m not actually Jewish, and anyway, yeah, I keep thinking I should light a candle except it hasn’t been a year for any of them and we’ve lost _four people in less than a year_.”

“Yeah.” Lydia let’s out a breath. “Yeah.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter just didn't want to be written. Also, I know there's no canonical evidence of Stiles's family being ethnically Jewish, but I can't remember any evidence to the contrary, and a lot of people who came over from Eastern Europe were Jewish.
> 
> On the other hand, I just passed my 7th kyu test (aka test for yellow-senior belt), which means that now I theoretically know what to do if someone tries to stab me. Yay.


	8. Chapter 8

Stiles wakes up feeling like he wants to sleep for the rest of his life, which may have something to do with the fact that he cried himself to sleep without taking his pain medication which was a combination of two spectacularly bad ideas. Instead, he rolls out of bed and drops down onto the floor, padding over to the bathroom. He looks fucking spectacular in the mirror, so he ignores it, splashing some water across his face.

He texted Scott asking him to text him. Scott probably will, but if he was really dedicated to getting wasted he did it with wolfsbane-laced alcohol, and he’ll have a hell of a hangover when he wakes up. And Stiles really can’t blame him. Allison was his everything, even after they broke up, and that’s not something that you get over easily. And Stiles has let go of most of his guilt, but seeing Scott like this is hard.

The Guide Pair told him he could show up whenever in the morning, but if he goes back to sleep he’s not going to wake up any time soon, so he grabs his backpack and heads over to the S/G center. Better than sitting around in this fucking sterile apartment wishing things could be different.

There’s a different receptionist there when he gets there, but he waves him in with a smile. “Blair and Jim are in their office. They wanted you to head there when you showed up.”

“Thanks.”

He heads to the office, looking in the partially-open door. The Prime Pair are in there, the Guide Prime working on a computer, Jim working through paperwork; Jim looks up at him. “Stiles.”

The Guide Prime twists around, smiling at Stiles. “Hey.” He stands, and Stiles sees that he was holding hands with Jim once he lets go. “Glad you’re here. Let’s head to the conference room; I wanted to talk to you about what you can do as an unbonded Guide.”

Stiles is sick of arguing, and Allison—Allison would want him to learn how to fight. Because the only thing worse than being strong is being strong and out of control. He doesn’t want this, he doesn’t want any of this, and this is all going to come back and bite him in the ass, but fuck it. He’ll learn control so he knows how to never use it.

Unless someone threatens his friends.

“Okay, let’s go.”

The Guide Prime looks surprised, then heads over to him, and they go three doors down to a conference room. Stiles drops down in one of the chairs, the Guide Prime sitting down in another one. The Guide Prime smiles at him. “So, this is a change of heart.”

“What’s the use in arguing?” He’s not about to start baring his soul to the Guide Prime. He’s never seen Beacon Hills, he’s never seen the shit that goes down there. And Stiles isn’t used to talking about it, because they don’t talk about it. It just happens, and then they go to school the next day and pretend everything is fine. “I should learn it. I’ll learn it.”

The Guide Prime looks at him for a minute, then nods. “Okay.” He taps a finger on the table. “The first thing you need to know—fairly common knowledge—is that unbonded Guides can’t, generally speaking, create expanded shields. Those shields, expanded around a Sentinel, allow the Sentinel to ground their senses and normalize them to stop zoning and fluctuations. In turn, Sentinels provide empathetic shields to their bonded Guide to bolster our primary shields. The reason that this is necessary is that, when we expand our shields, we open ourselves up to the feelings, the emotions, the pain, of everybody around us. It’s symbiotic—we give them our shields and they give us theirs.”

Despite himself, Stiles is interested. “But if I can’t do that before I’m bonded, what can I do?”

“There are a few things. The first isn’t particularly related to being a Guide; you can talk a Sentinel out of a zone. The scale system is considered obsolete by some, though I still believe it’s the most universally functional system we have. You give the Sentinel something to ground whatever zoning or spiking sense on—usually yourself—and give them a number to set that on. A dark room is normalized as a one for sight. Touch without pressure is normalized as a two for touch. We have a fairly regular flow of unbonded Sentinels in and out of this center, so I’ll get you working with them on that probably tomorrow.

“The next option is surface bonding. A surface bond is exactly what it sounds like: you make a preliminary bond with a Sentinel so that you can share your shields with them. This is usually done when a Sentinel will, for whatever, not be able to stop wild fluctuations for an extended period of time, which is usually due to things like drugs, illness, or some other traumatic event. This shouldn’t be done lightly, because if you stay bonded for longer than about a week, it will set, and you’ll have a very difficult time unbonding; additionally, even if it remains a surface bond, the separation can sometimes be difficult, because your mind may not immediately replace your shields at full strength when the Sentinel’s shields are gone. This is especially important for you to be aware of, because when your shields are down, you have the potential to do a lot of empathetic damage to those around you.”

“How?”

The Guide Prime leans back in his chair, looking at Stiles. “One of the things that Guides can do, one of the powers that we have, is that we can influence the emotions of those around us. Calm a crowd or agitate one, soothe a child. Things like that. For the most part, unless you have a lot of training, this tool is a blunt object, not a scalpel. You can’t go around tweaking other’s emotions; you can hit them over the head with a hammer with them.”

“Can you?”

The Guide Prime blinks at him. “Can I…?”

“Can you tweak people’s emotions? Do you have that training?”

His lips press thin. “I do, but you would notice if I was doing it. But back to my point. Most of the time, this has to be done intentionally, because our shields—shields that everyone has—hold the emotions in. Some people leak more than others; even people without a lick of empathy can feel that. But the higher your level, the higher your potential to emote on and affect people. As high level as you are, you could make people fell whatever you’re feeling, but more than they have the capacity to process.”

Fantastic. “So without bonding, I can help talk Sentinels out of a zone and accidentally emote all over people?”

The Guide Prime smiles a little. “Something like that. But you and I are strong enough that we can do a bit more than that. The way that the ranking system works—more or less—is that for every twenty points that a Guide has, they can shield a Sentinel with one more sense. Up to twenty points means one sense, up to forty points means two senses, and so on. What that really means is that a Guide of up to twenty points can extend a shield strong enough to block out the input of one sense.”

“Twenty points seems like such an arbitrary number.”

“It’s not exact, but we’ve found that in general, someone with below twenty struggles to shield two senses, and so on. Some Guides with twenty-one can’t shield two, some with nineteen can. It’s not perfect, but it’s a good metric. The other thing, though is that an unbonded Guide’s ability to expand their shield is the equivalent of about seventy-five points below their level. For most unbonded Guides, that means they can’t expand at all. For you, that means that, in a pinch, you can expand your shield enough to help a one sense Sentinel. It’s hard, and it’s draining, and I wouldn’t suggest doing it for more than a couple of hours, but it works.”

“Huh.” Stiles sticks the pad of his thumb in his mouth, starts chewing on it. “So I can do something useful with this?”

“Yes, you really can.”

“Huh.”

The Guide Prime nods. “For right now, I’m going to give you some reading on sense normalization, grounding, and surface bonding. It’s about twenty, twenty-five pages in total, so however long that takes you, that’s fine. If you finish today, I’ll see about having a Sentinel work with you so you can practice walking them through grounding.”

“I can get through twenty-five pages pretty quickly.”

“Okay, great.” The Guide Prime stands. “I’ll go get the papers, and I’ll be back in a second.” He pats Stiles’s shoulder, and Stiles resists the urge to flinch away because he’s a mess and touch from near-strangers has become a lot less friendly in the past couple years. Hooray for having issues.

True to his word, the Guide Prime is back a minute later with a stack of papers, which he sets down in front of Stiles. “On top is some basic theory about Sentinel grounding and sense normalization. Below that is a guide to walking a Sentinel through grounding; it’s written for a more general, non-Guide audience, so some of it may seem kind of basic or obvious. On the bottom is an introduction to surface bonding. If you have any questions, I’ll be in my office for most of the day, and otherwise you can ask Alan at the front desk and he can direct you to where I am.”

“Thanks.”

The Guide Prime nods. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”

Stiles nods back, absently, already starting to read.

And it’s _fascinating._ The whole concept of grounding is based on the idea of giving the Sentinel a consistent low-level stimulus and then having them set that stimulus at a specific level, designated by a number. But the problem with that—the obvious problem, the one Stiles still hasn’t found how they get around—is that you’re basically never going to end up with consistent levels between groundings. He could see how people could do it for something like sound or light—have a specific tone at a specific decibel and a specific distance play and have that be set at a specific number, or use a specific brightness and frequency of light—but things like touch couldn’t feasibly be made consistent like that. Especially if different people helped with different groundings. What he might think of as a soft touch by not be the same amount of pressure as what someone else thought of as a soft touch, and there was texture to take into account, and heat, and vibration. And so every time a Sentinel grounded, it should throw their ‘normal’ level totally out of whack.

Which seems like a bad design to him.

He jots his thoughts down in a notebook he has stuck in his backpack, then moves on to the next reading. He’ll ask about everything at the end.

\--

Two hours after Blair gave the readings to Stiles, Stiles walks into the office with the papers in one hand and a small notebook in the other. He hovers in the doorway, tapping on his leg with the notebook, and Blair waves him in.

“Hey. Do you have any questions?”

“Yeah.” Stiles walks in, dropping down in the spare chair Blair gestures for him to sit in. Jim acknowledges him with a nod, then goes back to his work. “So I finished the readings, and most if it makes sense, but I’m running into some problems with the theory behind the sense normalization stuff.”

Blair smiles, because that’s always what people have issue with. “What’s the problem you’re seeing?”

He opens his notebook, flipping to a page about halfway through that’s full of scrawled writing. “I mean, there should be a consistency issue. If someone normalizes on my touch today and then your touch tomorrow, what they count as one in touch will change. And, I mean, that shouldn’t be too much of a problem at one, but once you get up to four or five everything seems like it should be all out of whack. And I don’t get how that’s supposed to work.”

Blair nods. “And that right there is why a lot of people think the process is obsolete. The thing is, though, that the human brain is amazing. What you’re doing, essentially, is giving them one, something low level to focus on and two, a way to conceptualize walking down to it. Once they have that, once the senses are relatively stable, the vast majority of Sentinels stop controlling them using a numeric system. Instead, Sentinels generally have their own consistent and set level system within their own head, so when it has to be later walked up and down, they can do so without trouble.”

“So their brain just fixes it for them?”

“The brain is a wonderful thing.”

Something like pain—that same rush of pain as the day before—comes from Stiles, and he looks down at his notebook, poking out the page with the tip of his pen. “Yeah, sometimes.” Then he looks back up. “So, Sentinels. You said I could help a Sentinel. Or practice. Or something. Is there—what can I do?”

“There’s actually a Sentinel here at the moment who’s having some sense fluctuation issues, so you can help practice with him.”

Stiles blinks at him. “Aren’t you worried I could break him or something?”

“I’ll be there to make sure it goes okay. And shy of screaming or punching him, you couldn’t really make it worse.” Blair stands, and Stiles follows a second later.

“Is, uh—Jim, are you coming, too?”

Blair barely resists the urge to laugh at Jim’s growl. “There have been some…territorial issues. Jim’s banned from being in his secure room.”

“Is there going to be an issue with me—”

“It’s because I’m a Sentinel, kid.” Jim snorts. “We make each other twitchy sometimes.”

“That’s putting it mildly. Come on.”

They head to Secure Room 3, and Blair buzzes in and waits for a buzzed response before opening the door. There are a few chairs in the room along with the pillows, and the Sentinel is sitting in one of them, head down as he reads.

Stiles stops behind him. “You’re the feral.” Alan, the Sentinel, looks up, flushing slightly, and Stiles continues, “I mean, obviously not anymore, and wow, that was rude of me. Um. We met. Before.  Obviously. Well kind of obviously. You growled at me.”

Alan stands and puts the book down, hands open at his sides. He smiles apologetically at Stiles. “I’m really sorry about that.”

Stiles waves his hands. “No, no, it’s okay. It’s not the first time. I mean, it’s the first time with you, because it was the first time I had met you, but it’s not the first time in terms of people growling at me and being vaguely threatening, and I’m going to stop talking now because that sounded way worse out loud than it did in my head.”

Blair isn’t sure how that could at all sound good, even in someone’s head. “No, please, keep talking.”

“I’d really rather not, if that’s okay with you.” Determinedly, Stiles walks into the room, sticking his hand out towards Alan. “Hi. I’m Stiles. Nice to meet you while you’re not having your brain try to kill you or whatever it was doing.”

Alan looks awkwardly at Stiles’s hand. “I shouldn’t, uh—I’m a touch sense, and—”

“Right.” Stiles pulls his hand back, shoving it in his pocket. “I know what I’m doing. Clearly.” He turns back to look at Blair. “What are we doing?”

\--

The Guide Prime smiles at Stiles, then says, “You’re going to try walking Alan through some normalization exercises. I’m going to stay out of the way unless one of you needs me to get involved.”

Great. This’ll go well. Stiles turns back to…Alan, apparently. “Okay. Uh. Want to sit down? Should we sit down? We should probably sit down so you don’t fall on me again.” Giving him a small smile, Alan lowers himself down into the chair he had been sitting in, moving the book out of the way. Stiles drops down in the chair next to him, within arm’s reach but not close enough to touch by accident. “By the way, I just wanted to check that—well, that I didn’t hurt you when you passed out after the—the thing.”

“Hurt me?” Alan shakes his head. “No, it felt, uh…” He flushes a light pink. “Good. And then I passed out.”

The Guide Prime makes a noise, but when Stiles looks at him, his expression is neutral. Whatever. Stiles looks back at Alan. “Okay. So you said you’re a touch sense?”

“And hearing.”

Stiles tries to think of what the instructions had said. “And are they, uh, stable?”

“Not—” Alan winces. “Not really.”

“Which means?”

“Your heartbeat is really fast.”

Without thinking, Stiles claps his hand over his throat like that would actually do anything to block the sound of his heartbeat, and Alan smiles. “Right. Uh. Let’s start with sound, mostly because I’m less likely to fu-screw that up. I think.” He pitches his voice lower, softer, because his voice is probably super fucking grating. “So we’re going to set this to a one, which means that this should sound normal to you. You said that you can hear my heartbeat, so the first thing we need to do is get it so you can’t hear that. I guess the first thing I want you to do, then, is set hearing my heartbeat clearly to a five.

“To work your way down from hearing my heartbeat, I want you to think of your hearing as a, uh…a combination lock, where you can move it between numbers but you can feel where you get to an actual number. Like it clicks when you get to each number. So right now it’s at a five, and that’s too loud. When you start turning it down, my heartbeat will get quieter, so that by the time you get to four you can’t hear my heart anymore. Can you do that?”

Alan nods, eyes closed, and Stiles waits a few seconds until he nods again. “Okay, great. That’s great. I’m not screwing this up.” Alan smiles a little, eyes still closed, and Stiles grins at him, because hey, this isn’t going so badly. “So now, can you hear the Guide Prime’s breathing?”

“Blair,” the Guide Prime corrects quietly, which, fine, whatever.

“Can you bear Blair’s breathing?”

Alan nods again. Okay. “For right now, think of hearing Blair’s breathing as being at a four. Try doing the same thing with that, try twisting the dial towards three, his breathing getting quieter, until you—”

“I can’t.” Alan gasps out a breath, eyes opening, and his pupils are blown wide, almost as wide as when he was feral. Stiles barely resists the urge to jerk away from him, and hey, look, apparently a year or so of being surrounded by fucking terrifying people did him some good. “I can’t. Damn it.”

“All good. Do you know what’s stopping you?”

Alan shakes his head, squeezing his eyes back closed. “No, I just can’t.”

“That’s okay.”

Stiles reaches out to put a hand on his shoulder, then freezes when Blair says, “Don’t touch him.”

Stiles turns to blink at him. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“I’m pretty sure when you touched him earlier you shielded him, which is fascinating but would actually work against us at the moment.”

Huh. “Okay. No touching. Got it.”

He turns back to look at Alan, who’s staring at him. “If you can shield when you’re not bonded, how strong are you?”

“Strong.” Stiles grabs on to his Guide necklace with one hand, playing with it. “We should—” His phone vibrates in his pocket, and he reaches for it out as Alan winces. “Sorry, I should take this.”

“This isn’t really the time—”

Stiles swivels in his chair to look at Blair. “My best friend’s girlfriend was killed four months ago today, so yeah, I’m going to check this. Hopefully it’s him telling me he’s not—” He actually looks at his phone screen, and it takes him a second to actually process what it says. “Holy shit.”

Alan stiffens. “What’s wrong?”

Stiles looks at Blair. “They attacked a school.” He waves his phone, BBC alert up on it, at Blair. “At least five Sentinels and Guides were taken.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took longer than planned, but it's been a hard few days. Sorry about that. At least this one is slightly longer than usual, and also, plot is finally (more) happening.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This includes a discussion of an incident of gun violence at a school, which might be triggering for some people. There are no casualties. and it's not a particularly explicit discussion, but just be aware of that.

Things move quickly after that, which Stiles appreciates; the hellhole that is Beacon Hills has given him an idea of how badly things can go if people don’t deal with stressful situations well. But Blair and Jim see to have their shit together, because they get together in their office and call the Air Force people who are also apparently involved in the investigation into who’s trying to take Guides, and then they start going through their list of evil Guide-stealers.

Which of course means that they’re ignoring the fuck out of Stiles, so he grabs his laptop, logs into the unprotected (what the fuck) wifi, sits in the corner of the Guide Primes’ office, and gets to work.

There’s not much information out at the moment, and most of it’s a total mess—par for the course during and after an attack, especially one on a school, and that fact that he knows that is a sign of how fucked up the U.S. is—but he pulls open Twitter on one half of his screen and a window with BBC, CNN, ABC, and NBC on the other half and starts searching.

There are a number of tweets up about it already, mostly news sources talking about the lockdown at University of Oregon and then breaking news headline-only posts about the Sentinels and Guides who were taken. Preliminary look is four Guides, one Sentinel, with possibly the Sentinel who was taken having helped keep some of the Guides who weren’t taken safe. No names yet, but that’s not a huge surprise given how early it is.

Just over an hour in, he finds a Tweet apparently by one of the people who wasn’t taken tagged with #OregonAttack, with a list of names followed by the words “Pray for their safe return.”

He copies down the names into a Word document, then goes back to trying to find information about what happened. News sites are already running, contradictory information, some saying that it was a lone radial extremist Middle Eastern Muslim—thank you, Fox News—with a couple saying it was people speaking Chinese, one saying they were speaking Russian, and one saying they were white Americans with semiautomatics. So basically, anyone but Latinx or black people.

Spot on reporting by all.

The door to the office opens, and two men walk in; from Stiles’s angle, it takes him a second to recognize the military guy from the conference and his apparently-not-military-but-has-gun-calluses Guide (Daniel, right, his name is Daniel). Jack and Daniel. Or something.

Jim and Blair stand up, Blair saying, “Thanks for coming, though I wasn’t expecting a General to come personally.”

Jack gives a small smile. “We were in the area, and we already sent people to the crime scene. How much do we know?”

“From what we can tell, three attackers, most likely armed with assault rifles, attacked a Sentinel/Guide group meeting at the University of Oregon. So far reports are indicating no casualties besides a few bruises and one concussion, which means the guns were likely as much to control them as anything else, but four Guides and a Sentinel were taken.”

“That’s good, at least, that they didn’t start shooting people,” Daniel says. “It means they want them alive.”

Blair nods. “Guide traffickers usually do.”

“What do we know about the people who were taken?”

Jim shakes his head. “We don’t have names yet.”

“Actually.” They all turn to look at Stiles, and wow, that’s a lot of white men staring intensely at him. “Uh. I have the names. Theoretically.” When they all keep staring at him, he pulls up the Word document, reading off, “Sarah McKinley, Arthur Dobbs, Christina Miller-Gonzales, Cynthia Park, and Jonathan O’Neill.”

Jack and Daniel stiffen even before Jim turns to Jack and asks, “Any relation?”

“Something like that.” Jack turns to Daniel. “Call Davis, get teams on Sam and Cassie. If this isn’t a coincidence I don’t want to find out when someone goes after one of them.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to call Cassie to make sure she doesn’t kill her security team.”

Daniel walks out of the room, and Blair looks at Jack. “Cassie?”

“My daughter.”

Blair looks oddly surprised at that. “You have a daughter with your wife?”

“She’s adopted.” And then Jack also turns and walks out of the room, closing the door behind him.

Stiles looks at Blair. “Why is it so surprising that he has a kid?”

Blair sits back down at his desk, though Jim stays standing, watching the door. “It’s rare for a Sentinel to have a child with somebody they aren’t bonded to while bonded to someone else. Adoption makes sense, though—a lot of Sentinel or Guide children who are born to regular parents and then abandoned are adopted by S/G parents. That’s likely what happened in this case.”

Huh. BBC has an update, so Stiles opens that tab as a phone on Jim’s desk starts to ring. He picks it up. “Ellison.” With his free hand, Jim reaches down, grabs a piece of paper, and starts writing on it. “Hotchner? Can you spell that for me?” The door opens, and Daniel walks in. “And the number?” Jim writes something else down. “I’ll call you back in a few minutes.” He hangs up, then looks at Blair. “It’s now crossed state lines and they went after someone who wasn’t Air Force, so they called in the feds. They want to know if we’re going to Oregon.”

Blair looks at Stiles, who doesn’t say anything because what can he say. “We’ll talk about it.”

\--

Jack walks back into the room radiating about as much concern as he ever radiates—slightly less than when Daniel spent a while as Prior, but not much—and slides one hand up Daniel’s neck and into his hair. It’s more possessive than he usually gets in public, but Daniel gets it, so he doesn’t say anything.

“Daniel and I need a room where we can talk without being recorded or listened to.”

Blair nods. “The conference rooms aren’t monitored and all have professional-grade white noise generators. You’re welcome to use any of the ones that are empty, and you can lock the door.”

Jack nods, moving his hand to the small of Daniel’s back; the two of them head out of the room, and Daniel knows just how much Jack hates the idea of talking about this in an unsecured location, but it’s not like they can beam back out for a while. Someone would definitely notice.

Jack checks over the entire room for listening devices before turning on the white noise generator and flipping the lock. Then he drops down into a chair. Daniel walks over to him, touching a hand to his shoulder. “We’ll get him back. You. Whatever.”

Jack makes a face. “I want to bring in Sheppard.”

Daniel blinks at him. “Sheppard? Why?”

“For one thing, they now have a hostage whose existence is classified, and we have no AFOSI people who are read in. Which is something we need to fix. Still. But also, he’s a Sentinel, and he spent enough time wrangling people that he should be able to do deal with this. Or at least what he needs to deal with.”

“That’s really why?”

Jack smirks at up at him. “Also he’s driving me nuts. Demanding to know when Atlantis is shipping back once a week. Maybe this’ll keep him occupied. And he’s functional solo, which means we only need to worry about one person keeping all this shit in their brain, not two.”

Daniel snorts. “It’s not like you’re asking for my approval.”

“No, not really.” He leans back in his chair, hands behind his head. His elbow bumps against Daniel’s chest. “If they’re going after me—”

Daniel moves to lean against the table next to Jack, facing him, and Jack moves his leg so they’re in contact. “You know they were after the Guides.”

“I also know that the two attacks—that we know about—were against…well, me. And Sam can take care of herself, but Cassie’s not military.”

“She was trained by you, Sam, and Teal’c. And she’s human. They’re not going to go after her.”

Jack grimaces. “Yeah.”

They’re there for a minute, just existing next to each other, and then Daniel says, “I don’t know if you were listening, but apparently the FBI is now involved, too, because it crossed state lines. We can fight it, but I don’t know how easy that’ll be without tipping people off to the fact that other you is important.”

Jack groans, rubbing his face across his hands. “This is such a jurisdictional clusterfuck. No, we can play along with the FBI for the moment, because they have the most experience with hostage rescue. And if necessary, we can just claim national security and kick all of them out.”

Daniel nudges his leg. “You really want the ‘play nice with others’ speech from the President again?”

“About as much as I want the ‘let me appoint you SecDef’ speech.”

“You’d be the first Sentinel openly in a Cabinet position.”

“I don’t _want_ a Cabinet position. I barely want a desk. What am I doing with a desk?”

“Saving the world.”

“Right. That old chestnut.” Jack looks at him for a moment, then straightens. “His tracker. Mini-me. He should have a tracker on him, right? Why can’t we just use the Daedalus to find him?”

That’s something Daniel should have thought of immediately, and he’ll yell at himself for it later, but for right now, it’s the best thing they have to go off of. “You should probably make that call.”

\--

Stiles takes one look at Jim and Blair—who are currently attempting to hold a wordless conversation with just their eyebrows—and climbs to his feet, laptop balanced on one hand. “I’ll go be somewhere else while you’re talking.”

Blair nods in his general direction, and Stiles skirts around them and out of the office. There’s not really anywhere to go, so he sits down against the wall across from the office, a few feet down so if they open the door he won’t be right there staring at them, and props his laptop up on his knees.

It’s late enough in the day that Scott should be awake, hangover be damned, so he calls his number, sticking his earbud in his ear and plugging it into the phone. It shouldn’t stop Sentinels, but it should at least make it so they can’t hear without actively trying to listen in.

Three rings in, Scott answers. “Stiles?” He sounds like shit, but Stiles can’t really blame him for that.

“Hey, buddy. You okay?”

“Head hurts.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet.” Stiles moves his laptop off to the side so he doesn’t need to keep looking at Tweets about the attack. He has enough shittiness in his daily life; he doesn’t need any more of it. “How about otherwise?”

“The territory’s fine.”

“Not what I was asking and you know it.”

“I’m _fine_.” Scott’s voice goes sharp for a minute, but Stiles knows him too well to be hurt or offended. “I just—sometimes I still can’t believe she’s gone. She was never supposed to—this was never supposed to happen.”

Stiles drops his head down against his knees. “Yeah, I know.”

“I can’t—” Scott clears his throat. “How are things going there?”

“They’re…going. It’s mostly me reading shit. I don’t know. Me being here seems kind of pointless.” He sighs. “You hear about the stuff in Oregon?”

“I heard that there was stuff in Oregon.”

Stiles picks his head up to lean it against the wall behind him. “Yeah, well, whoever tried to take me—us, whatever—hit the University of Oregon, took four Guides and a Sentinel hostage. Or kidnapped them. I don’t know if they count as being hostage if they were taken somewhere else. Terminology is confusing. Anyway, the Prime Pair and the Air Force and apparently now the FBI are working on it, so I might be coming home sooner than we expected.”

“Great.”

“Yeah. Getting kind of sick of them reminding me that I’m going to go crazy if I don’t find my magic other half. It would almost make it worth it to be a werewolf, if it would make all of the Sentinel/Guide shit go away.”

Scott laughs. “We don’t actually know if turning after you emerge makes it go away.”

“Guide-werewolf? Werewolf Guide? I do guide werewolves.”

“You sure you should be talking about this in an S/G center?”

Stiles smiles. “I don’t think the Prime Pair is going to mind that much if I talk about video games in my spare time. They’re not that judgmental.”

“Right.” Scott groans. “Okay, my hangover is basically gone, and I should probably call Isaac.”

Oh, fuck. Isaac. “Probably a good idea. Give him my best. Or whatever.” Stiles reaches up with his good arm, scrubbing his hand through his hair. “Fuck this shit.”

“I know.” Scott sighs. “Okay. Text me when you know what’s going on.”

“Will do.” Stiles ends the call, then sticks the other earbud in his ear and turns on music. Which is probably not the best idea, because then he can’t hear anyone coming, but he’s in the middle of an S/G center with his back against a wall, which means that he should be at least relatively safe. As safe as he ever is anymore.

With that in mind, he pulls her laptop back up on his lap and goes back to streaming muted closed-captioned CNN live on half his screen and their document of partially-translated bestiary on the other half. He has work to do.

He gets through another four pages of the bestiary—and when did Lydia find the time to translate all of this, anyway, Stiles barely has time to sleep—before CNN moves away from talking about some racist thing that some politician in Arizona said and back on to the Oregon attack. They’re still not releasing names, which would bother him more if he didn’t already have the names, but they have a police chief talking about how the attackers didn’t seem to be affiliated with any nationality or religious group. Which gives them actually nothing.

A hand lands on his shoulder, and he jerks away so hard his laptop tumbles to the floor, and he doesn’t even care because who the fuck is touching him, and he scrambles to his feet to see, next to him, military guy standing there, hands out and open, a speculative look on his face.

Stiles rips his earbuds out of his ears. “Sorry.” He sucks in a breath, trying to slow his pounding heart. “I didn’t hear you. Did you need something?”

Military guy sends him a surprisingly gentle smile. “Just wanted to check why you’re sitting in the hallway.”

Oh. Right. That’s not a normal thing for people to do. “Mom and dad are talking.” Military guy—Jack—blinks at him. “The Prime Pair. They’re talking. I think about what to do with me.”

“Why do they need to figure out what to do with you?”

Apparently the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. “Because apparently you’re not supposed to be a high level Guide with no training, because without a Sentinel I could go crazy and getting a Sentinel could screw up everyone around me. And this is spring break, so it’s the only time I can do this before, like, June. You really don’t care about this. Sorry.” He crouches down to close his computer, picking it up in his arms. “You can probably go in if you knock.”

“Thanks, kid.” Jack sticks his hands in his pockets. “How’d you get those names?” It sounds casual, but his expression is…something not-casual.

“Twitter.” Stiles gestures with his laptop. “There was a Tweet by someone who was there, and her Twitter lists her as a Guide so it’s probably reasonable to believe that she was there. Have you—you were saying you were related to one of them. Have you checked with them?”

Jack shakes his head. “He’s not answering, and he would pick up if I was calling. And even the fact that you had the name is a bad sign.”

“I hope you find him.” Stiles shrugs awkwardly. “I mean, I hope you find all of them, because human trafficking is bad and people shouldn’t be sold and I’m going to stop talking now, but…yeah. I hope you find him.”

“Thanks.” Daniel walks out of one of the rooms, and Jack turns towards him. “Anything?”

Daniel shakes his head. “Still looking. But, uh, Davis called to say we have confirmation on the names. Jonathan definitely was taken.”

Jack takes a second, and then he nods. “Okay. There’s no way they’re going to let me get away with not going back to Washington at this point, so let’s go get this figured out.”

Daniel walks over, touching his wrist. “You okay?”

“Jonathan can take care of himself.” He says it like a joke, and Daniel smiles like it is, and Stiles really fucking doesn’t get it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it seems like War Studies isn't actually a degree in the US (except possibly at schools like Annapolis or West Point), so let's just pretend that Jonathan is doing some sort of Peace and Conflict Resolution degree and thinks of it as War Studies.


	10. Chapter 10

Colonel Ellis greets Sheppard on the bridge of the Daedalus with a nod and a brisk, “Colonel.”

“Colonel. I was told you found something.”

Ellis nods, sitting down in his chair. “We tracked the subcutaneous transmitter to an abandoned warehouse outside of Eugene, Oregon.”

“Any life signs?”

“We’re reading some, but the warehouse is close to a power plant that is messing with our sensors. The most we’re getting is that there’s someone or something alive in there.”

It’s not much to work from, but Sheppard had done more with less and was still standing around to think about it, so he would have to make do. “Are we going in with live ammo or zats? I don’t know SOP when operating around Earth civilians.”

“Zats. You’ll be beamed down to just outside the building with a contingent of marines, and you’ll breach from there. There should be five civilians plus one of ours.”

Sheppard nods, accepting a zat from an airman. “Understood.”

“Good luck.” And then Ellis nods to the person next to him, and the entire world goes white.

It takes Sheppard a minute to adjust (which is why SOP is to _warn Sentinels before beaming them_ ), his sight flaring white-blind and then overcompensating by shutting all the way down to black. He’s used to this, because some people are assholes and don’t bother to follow the rules out of expedience, but it’s dangerous as hell, because he’s functionally blind like this. Normally he wouldn’t be just from a bright flash, but beaming fucks with all of his senses enough that he can’t compensate.

So he just puts his back to the nearest wall he can find, covers his eyes with his hand to force the adjustment faster, and waits.

A couple of seconds later, a marine asks, voice booming hollowly, “Colonel Sheppard?”

“Beaming adjustment. I’m not zoning.”

“We’re all ready when you are.”

Of course they are. He still can’t quite hear right, but it’s stabilizing, so he starts to listen in to what’s going on in the warehouse. It’s hard to penetrate the concrete walls, mostly because the area is so goddamn loud, but then he hears what’s inside, and oh, that’s bad. He touches his earpiece, activating it. “Daedalus, tell Medical to be prepared for beam directly there.”

“Yes, sir.”

The marine next to him on second listen he recognizes as one of his, one from the second wave who left fairly early on. Family reasons or something. “Sir?”

“I’m getting heartbeats, but they’re weak and fast.”

“Are you smelling blood?”

Sheppard shakes his head. “The only thing I’m smelling is cat piss.” He takes his hand away from his eyes, and he can see well enough now. “If someone’s injured in there, we need to go now.”

They go in zats raised (and a more awkward weapon, he doesn’t know if he’s ever used) to clear a massive open space full of rusted support columns, three monstrously huge cats that are likely the source of the heartbeats, and not a whole fuckton else.

“Daedalus, are you still reading the tracker from this location?”

“We are,” but even as they’re saying that, something catches Sheppard’s eye. It’s a small ball, silver and dark blue in the gloom of the warehouse, and he recognizes it even before it picks it up and it starts glowing.

“The ‘one of ours’ that we’re looking for, are they a Sentinel with the ATA gene?”

There’s a pause, and then Ellis says, “He is.”

A marine is waving him over, so he pockets the ball, heading over to the small table he’s standing next to. It’s mostly empty, except for a small metal tray with a bloody subcutaneous transmitter sitting in it. “Daedalus, the transmitter has been removed. And we have a problem.”

\--

“So.” Stiles claps his hands, and they all look at him. “When am I going home?”

Blair and Jim look at him, and Blair looks somewhere between confused and really fucking tired. It’s a look Stiles is way too familiar with being sent his way, though he has a feeling that this time the tiredness has nothing to do with dealing with him. “The fact that you need training hasn’t changed.”

“Aren’t you heading to Oregon, though? I don’t think Skype-Guiding is going to work all that well.”

Blair glances at Jim, then says, “We were actually thinking you should come to Oregon with us.”

“You want me to go to _Oregon_ with you?”

Blair just looks at him. “Your training does need to continue. And there will likely be a number of Sentinels who need help there. It’ll be good practice.”

Stiles presses his laptop to his chest for a moment, debating how worth it is to argue, and then he sighs. “Okay. I’ll go call my dad.”

He heads out of the room and into an empty conference room, dumping all of his stuff on the table. He’s been losing stuff along the way, his backpack…somewhere, but he can find all of that later.

Turning on the white noise generator and closing the door, he pulls out his phone, dialing his dad’s number.

“Sheriff Stilinski.”

Stiles sinks down into a chair, scrubbing a suddenly-shaking hand across his face. He hadn’t realized how much he needed to talk to his dad until he heard his voice. “Hey, dad.”

“Stiles? Is something wrong?”

Stiles forces a laugh. “Why do you always think something’s wrong?”

“You’re calling me in the middle of the day when you’re supposed to be training with the most powerful Guide in North America. You tell me.”

“Technically he’s only the most powerful _recorded_ Guide in North America, because we don’t actually know what my level is, and there could be other unregistered Guides who are stronger. Registration in Mexico is—”

“Stiles.”

“Right.” Stiles isn’t sure the best way to broach this, so he starts with, “What do you know about what’s happening in Oregon?”

“The abductions? Why—tell me you’re not in Oregon.”

“Nope.” He pauses. “Not yet.”

Apparently that’s not the best way, because his dad’s makes a half-strangled noise and then demands, “Not yet? What are you planning on doing?”

“Why do you think _I’m_ planning on doing anything?”

“ _Stiles_.”

Yeah, okay, good point. “This time, it actually isn’t me. The Prime Pair has to go down—over?—to Oregon because this is at least partly their investigation. Or something. That wasn’t really explained to me. But either way, they need to go there, and apparently my training needs to continue, so they want me to go with them.”

His dad takes a second then sighs. “Do you want to go with them?”

“No, but I—I have power and no idea how to control it, and I don’t trust myself to go down that road again.”

“That wasn’t you,” his dad says instantly, and this is a conversation they’ve had before and will have again.

And the same lines come out of Stiles’s mouth, like they’re reading from a goddamn script that refuses to change. “They were my hands. Allison’s dead. Don’t I owe it to her to make sure that doesn’t happen again?”

“Don’t do something because you think you owe it to her or to anyone.”

Stiles grits his teeth. “That’s easy for you to say. You don’t have to live with this.”

“You’re right.” It’s not the next line in the script, and Stiles is so surprised he actually shuts up for a moment. “I assume you’re going to go to Oregon.”

“You’re not going to tell me I can’t?”

“You’re almost an adult, and you just got back from going to _Mexico_ to face a mass murderer. I’ve learned that telling you not to do something doesn’t particularly work if you’re determined to do it.” His dad sounds like he’s given up a bit, and that’s not what Stiles wants to hear.

So he says, “I won’t go if you don’t want me to.”

“I’m not going to fight you on this.” It sounds like his dad smiles, though, when he says, “I am going to eat fried chicken while you’re gone, though.”

“No, no, vegetables and healthy food only. Fried chicken isn’t allowed.”

“It’s payment for you running off to Oregon and leaving me alone. And speaking of that, do you know how you’re getting there?”

Stiles opens his mouth to answer, then realizes he doesn’t have a clue.

\--

They board the S/G center’s private plane two hours later, leaving from a small airport near Cascade, and Jim immediately takes an aisle seat, puts Sentinel-grade earplugs in, and closes his eyes. It’s his standard practice when flying, because the engine noise plays hell on his hearing otherwise.

Blair takes a seat across from Stiles, who looks uncomfortable. “Have you ever flown before?”

Stiles blinks at the chair past him, clearly distracted. “Have I—no. No, I, uh, we drove to Mexico and tried to—anyway. No. I don’t think so. Not after I was old enough to turn short term memory into long term memory, at least. Why?”

“You just seemed a bit tense. What happened in Mexico?”

“Mexico? I—” Stiles focuses on him for the first time since they got on the plane. “Nothing. We met with some people, saw the sights. We were catching up with a friend.”

It doesn’t feel like a lie, but it also doesn’t feel true. But this isn’t the time to push. “How are you doing?”

“Fantastic,” and that, there, feels like a flat-out lie, even without counting the thinly veiled sarcasm.

And now Blair is going to push. “I’ve been feeling pain from you since I met you, and I’m not talking about the wound in your arm. Something is eating at you, and it’s going to make all of this so much harder for you if you don’t resolve it.”

Stiles stares at him for a long moment, so long Blair thinks he’s just not going to answer, and his eyes are so, so hard. And then he snaps, “Fine, you want to know what’s going on? You really want my sad fucking story? Four months ago today the love of my best friend’s life was killed, and it’s my fucking fault. Erica’s dead, Boyd is dead, people are all dropping like flies around me, my ex-girlfriend’s biological dad almost killed my best friend more than once, there was a hit list out on basically everyone I care about because someone thought they’re monsters, and hey, we could all die at any moment. You happy with that chat? That tell you what you wanted to know?”

Blair takes a second to take that in, because that’s really truly not what he expected Stiles to say. Finally, he gets out, “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well, so am I, but that’s not going to bring any of them back, so it doesn’t really matter.” And then he reaches over, grabbing his earbuds to stick in his ear.

Blair’s heart hurts at the thought of this person, this kid, going through so much, and he knows he’s not going to be able to do anything to help, not right now, so instead he walks back over to where Jim is sitting, curling up as best as he can next to him. Jim wraps an arm around his shoulders, and Blair closes his eyes and breathes through the pain radiating off of the kid even from this distance.

Stiles passes out half an hour into the flight, but it’s an uneasy sleep; Blair can see that his body is tight with tension, the corners of his eyes tight and his jaw clenched. Blair wants to do _something_ to help him, but smashing his way through Stiles’s barriers to offer some comfort definitely wouldn’t help. So he just sits there curled up against Jim and watches, even as Stiles’s pain itches and presses at the back of his skull.

Just before they start their descent, when Stiles jerks silently awake and then buries his face in his hands, Jim presses his lips to Blair’s ear and says, “You don’t need to fix everyone.”

Blair wants to respond, but he’s still wearing those earplugs, so Blair settles for glaring at him until he grins and looks away.

Jim’s the first one out of the plane, and Blair follows just behind him, letting him crowd him up against a wall and breathe in his scent. Sentinels generally hate the smell of recycled air from planes, but Jim hates trying to smell Blair through it even more, so he always spends a couple of minutes after every flight he grudgingly takes with the two of them pressed up against the nearest vertical surface.

He can feel Stiles hovering near them, but he waits until Jim is done and moves away half an inch before saying, “There should be a rental car here for us. We’re going to meet the FBI and whoever the Air Force is sending at the Eugene Police Station.”

“They’re not going to be happy that we’re all there.”

Blair leans around Jim to look at Stiles, who has one earbud in his ear. “What do you mean?”

He shrugs. “My dad’s a sheriff, remember? Local cops don’t like it when the feds show up. Anything that feels like you’re infringing on their jurisdiction.”

Jim turns to look at him, one hand tucked up under the back of Blair’s shirt. “I was a detective before—and after—meeting Blair. I know how to talk to police.”

Stiles hitches his backpack a little higher on his good shoulder. “Maybe, but you’re the guy without a shield who’s showing up to tell them that they’re doing their job wrong. Whatever. I’m just here to…whatever. I don’t know what I’m here for. Training.” He shoves his hand through his hair, and now that Blair is looking closer in the light, he can see that Stiles is so pale that he almost looks gray, a thin layer of sweat across his forehead.

Blair touches Jim’s shoulder before walking over towards Stiles. “You don’t need to head to the police station if you don’t want to.”

Stiles blinks at him, and the bruises under his eyes are nearly black. “Really? That was what you got from my speech? No, I’ll go to the police station.” He picks up his duffel bag, which was sitting on the ground next to him, and shoots them a cocky grin. “Come on. Where’s the car?”

\--

Stiles is planning on never sleeping again.

He hadn’t been planning on sleeping on the plane, but he was fucking exhausted, and after talking about Beacon Hills (and what the hell had he been thinking?) he had mostly just wanted to not think. Which had worked out so well until he started dreaming about the tree, and Allison laying splayed out on it, sword in her chest, blood bubbling out of her mouth. And every time he tried to pull the sword out, it slid an inch further in, pinning her to the stump.

So yeah, that was fun.

And the other problem is that he’s angry. Painfully, irrationally angry, like it’s all there, under his skin, and every time he opens his mouth he has to swallow it down so it doesn’t come spilling out, and he knows that this is what happens when he spends so much time shoving everything down, because he can’t talk about it, they don’t talk about it, and one of these days he’s going to drown and take everyone around him down with him.

Sleep would probably help with that, or real non-Eichen House therapy, or screaming into an empty room for an hour and then punching something until everything hurt, but none of those are particularly viable options at the moment, so he’ll just swallow and breathe until the anger fades and he knows he won’t hurt anyone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah, you might have noticed that Stiles is...angry. Just keep in mind that this is only something like a month after the deadpool and then the events that took place at La Iglesia, and (as stated) only four months after Allison's death, so he's kind of screwed up.
> 
> Next chapter you get to see the Criminal Minds people. Hopefully I'll get it up in the next few days, though I just started a second job/more than doubled the number of hours I'm working in a week, so we'll see if that happens.


	11. Chapter 11

If the Eugene police chief gets any tenser, he might strain something.

Derek can’t blame him; local cops rarely like feds joining their investigation, and the fact that both the Air Force and the Prime Pair of North America are inbound isn’t helping matters any. Frankly, Derek’s not too thrilled with the situation either; having this many people involved is a jurisdictional nightmare at best.

The office door opens, and in walks the Prime Pair, who are immediately headed off by Hotch and JJ, who lead them into the room where the boards are set up. Left in their wake is a teenager, white, maybe 18, who takes a quick glance around the station and then starts leaning against the wall like he’s the only thing holding it up.

Derek watches him for a moment, because what the hell, then heads over to him. The teenager, whose head is down as he stares at his phone, doesn’t react even once Derek is standing right in front of him. “Hey, kid.”

There’s a flinch, and when the teen looks up, there’s a split second where his eyes are so, so cold. And then they shift like a film is sliding across them, and he grins. “Hey, adult.” He pulls the earbud out of his ear, tucking it into the neckline of his shirt. “I’m supposed to be here.”

“Uh huh.”

“I’m with them.” He points at the room the Prime Pair is in.

Derek just looks at him, because is he really supposed to believe that? “Right. As what, their mascot?”

The kid laughs. “Something like that.” He pushes off of the wall, and Derek tenses. “I’m not planning on attacking anyone.”

“I can’t just let you wander around in here.”

“Yeah, I know how police stations work.” He glances over at the girl sitting in one of the chairs off in the corner of the waiting area. “She okay?” The girl wasn’t okay—she had been there, had seen one of her friends taking and was now refusing to leave. But Derek wasn’t going to say that. “Right.” And then he starts to head over to her.

“Hey.” He catches the kid’s arm, and the kid jerks away with a sharp hiss. “Leave her alone.”

“I know what she’s going through.”

“Really?”

He turns a flat look on Derek. “Really.” And with that, he heads over to sit next to the girl, not quite close enough to be touching.

He doesn’t seem to be doing any harm, so Derek heads into the room with the Prime Pair. He offers the Sentinel Prime a hand. “SSA Derek Morgan.”

The Sentinel Prime shakes it briskly, then lets go. “Jim Ellison. That’s Blair Sandburg.” The Guide Prime gives a small wave from where he’s leaning over a computer monitor. “Don’t touch.”

Derek nods. “No problem. And the, uh, teenager out there—”

“He’s with us.” Ellison tilts his head to one side. “Huh. Good for him.”

“What?”

Ellison smiles, nodding his head past Derek to where the kid is standing in the doorway. “She, uh, remembers something else.” Everyone in the room looks up at the kid, who gives an awkward half-wave. “Hi. The girl out there, the one who was at the attack. She just remembered something else. Also apparently the Sentinel they took is a five-sense.”

Sandburg straightens. “Bonded?”

The teenager shrugs. “She didn’t say.”

“Which probably means no.” He relaxes a hair, and Ellison does too. “Okay. That’s bad but not catastrophic. If he’s gotten this far as an unbonded five-sense without getting on my radar for something going wrong, it means he either has exceptionally good control or fairly weak senses while unbonded, so this hopefully shouldn’t trigger a feral episode.

Hotch looks at him. “And if it does?”

“Then you’ll be glad to have two high-level Guides here.”

“Speaking of that,” JJ says, “where _is_ Reid?”

“He and Alex went to try to connect Garcia to the University security camera archive. They keep it in a separate location and aren’t connected to the cloud.” Hotch looks at JJ. “Talk to the girl, see what else she remembers.”

JJ nods, slipping past Derek and the kid, who squeezes himself against the door frame to get out of her way.

“Stiles,” Ellison says suddenly, and the kid nods. “Ignoring the Air Force connection, if you heard that someone was willing to risk attacking a bunch of Sentinels to get hold of a random assortment of bonded and unbonded Guides of unknown skill level, what’s your first thought?”

“Human experimentation.” Stiles says it without hesitation, then shrugs when everyone looks at him. “I mean, I know the basis of statistical analysis. Random sampling is one of the key things. And whatever they’re testing, they can test on bonded versus unbonded. Though pulling the bonded ones away from their Sentinels screw up that theory.” He shrugs again. “Probably wrong, but that’s my first thought. Actually, also, were any of the Guides taken bonded?”

Hotch flips through the files in front of him, then shakes his head. “No, they’re all unbonded.”

“I mean, that might have been on purpose. It’s not like it’s not made obvious which of us are bonded.”

He’s a Guide. Somehow Derek hadn’t expected that, even though it should have been obvious. “But most of the group was unbonded. It was, what, sixty percent of the Guides at the meeting?”

“Well, it’s not that, then. Yay. Nobody likes experimenting on people. Well, someone likes experimenting on people. Presumably. Because they do it. If you don’t have any mildly panicked Sentinels for me to talk down or whatever, I’m going to go do my homework.” And with that, he turns and walks out of the room.

Hotch looks at Ellison. “Who is he, exactly?”

Sandburg is the one who answers. “He’s my student.”

“He shouldn’t be involved in an active investigation.”

Sandburg shrugs. “It’s our call who’s involved in our side of the investigation. And I need him here to continue his training.” He looks up from the monitor he’s been staring at. “He’s not going to get in the way.”

“He matches the victimology nearly perfectly,” Hotch says. “If they’re going after Guides, a Guide alone poking around in the area is at risk.”

Ellison lets out a low growl. “He’s not alone.”

\--

“Stiles?”

Stiles picks his head up from where he’s still struggling through the Latin translations because he’s trying to work through stuff about phoenixes or something else magic and bird related. Maybe thunderbirds. Probably not thunderbirds.

He really hopes it’s not thunderbirds.

Blair is looking at him, and he realizes he’s supposed to respond. Hopefully not to anything specific. “Yes?”

“There’s someone you should meet.” There’s a guy standing next to him, tall and thin and awkward-looking, shoulders hunched like he’s not really comfortable in his skin. Stiles knows that feeling. He knows it way too well. “Stiles, this is Dr. Spencer Reid.”

Stiles drops his stuff on the waiting area chair next to him, standing. Dr. Reid looks like he doesn’t want touch, so Stiles just nods at him. “Hey. You, uh…nice gun.”

Dr. Reid glances down at it. “Thanks. You’re a Guide.”

Stiles pulls out the chain from under his shirt, letting the pendant dangle from it. “Yeah. So are you.” He doesn’t know how he can feel that, but he can. He shoves the chain back down in his shirt. “Are you FBI, or—I’m assuming you’re not Air Force, so you’re probably a fed.”

“I am.”

“But that’s actually not why I wanted the two of you to meet. Spencer is a former student of mine and was, until recently, the highest ranking unbonded Guide in North America.”

Oh, lovely. “That’s a title you’re welcome to take back at any time.”

Dr. Reid blinks at him, and he looks disconcertingly young for someone who apparently has a PhD (MD?) and is a fed. “Are you planning on bonding soon?”

“No, I’m wishing I could stop being a Guide.” He drags his hand through his hair. “Sorry, I’m just—”

“In a lot of pain.”

For fuck’s sake. “Why does everyone insist on reminding me of that? Yes, yes, I am, nice chat, can you read Latin?” Dr. Reid nods. “Of course you can. Uh, how strong are you? If I’m allowed to ask that? Before last week I knew, like, one Guide, and he’s—whatever. Fucked up. We all are. Yeah.”

Dr. Reid doesn’t even react to his rambling, which is impressive, because sometimes even Scott gets overwhelmed by him. “I’m level 90.”

Stiles whistles, then remembers that he’s actually higher level than that, which is still fucking bizarre. “Um. So. Cool. Nice to meet you. I’m usually more personable than this. Sort of. I’m making a great first impression, aren’t I?” He rubs a hand across his face. “Sorry. I’m going to try again. Hi, I’m Stiles Stilinski. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Were you the one who posed the human experimentation theory?”

Oy. “Uh. Yeah. I was mostly just making sh-stuff up.”

“It’s a valid theory, one we are actually considering.”

Fantastic. That’s just freaking fantastic. “I really hope they’re not taking Guides to experiment on them.”

Blair’s phone rings, and Stiles relaxes a little because thank god he doesn’t need to keep trying to figure out what to hell to say so he doesn’t sound like an angry idiot. Which is mostly what he feels like at the moment. An angry exhausted idiot who can’t manage to string two coherent thoughts together without getting lost in between.

Blair sticks his phone up to his eat, and almost simultaneously Jim takes a step out of the conference room where he’s been working. “Blair Sandburg.” He’s silent for a moment, and then his expression shifts a bit, and Jim starts heading across the room to him. “Okay, thank you for telling me.” Jim reaches him, one hand closing around the back of Blair’s neck, and Blair half-turns towards him. “I’ll be over in about half an over with a few Guides.” He pockets his phone, sighing.

“I’m coming with you, Chief.”

“Wouldn’t expect anything different.” Blair looks at Dr. Reid, who’s watching him curiously. “Spencer, are you willing to come to the hospital with us? They’ve had six Guides and nine Sentinels come in in the last hour with issues relating to the attack.”

Dr. Reid nods. “I’ll ask Hotch—Agent Hotcher. They’ll probably send me with another agent, especially because I fit the victimology so closely. In fact, the hospital may be a target.” He heads off towards the conference room.

Stiles looks at Blair and Jim. “Does this count as mildly panicked Sentinels for me to help talk down?”

\--

The hospital smells like hospital, which is not a good smell to Stiles. The whole…thing of hospitals isn’t good for him, not since them having Scott mostly-die in one, not since the Nogitsune, not since his mom.

He’s going to hold it together, though, because he’s not going to have a fucking panic attack in the middle of a hospital, and because apparently there’s shit to get done, and he’s going to do it.

Their bizarre contingent—Blair, Jim, Dr. Reid, Agent Morgan, and Stiles—stops in front of the S/G section of the hospital, Blair looking at all of them. “Spencer, I want you to work with the Guides. Try to get them to their empathetic baseline. Stiles, you and I are going to start working our way through the Sentinels, helping them down out of their sensory issues.”

Stiles blinks at him. “Are you going to be…there? Like, are we working together?”

“No.”

“Then I’m not qualified to do that.” Stiles isn’t sure why he has to tell Blair this, because it should be really fucking obvious from the fact that he has about eight minutes of training that never actually got completed.

“Right. This, uh—” Blair glances over at Dr. Reid, who blinks back at him.

Agent Morgan touches Dr. Reid shoulder, saying, “C’mon, pretty boy. Let’s go.” They head off and, huh, okay, that’s an interesting nickname for a male FBI agent to have for another male FBI agent, even one as objectively pretty as Dr. Reid.

Blair looks back at Stiles. “What we’re doing here is different from what you were learning back at the Center. Back at the Center, you were normalizing—okay, think of sense control as homeostasis. With zoning and peaking, it’s essentially a fever; they’re off baseline. Same with grey-outs, except then they’re off in the other direction. But what we have here, which is in this case delayed-onset trauma-induced sensory distress—D-TISD—is essentially when homeostasis stops working entirely, and they stop being able to regulate themselves. Senses will fluctuate wildly—and, more importantly, randomly.”

“So?”

“So all of our tricks for helping a Sentinel find a baseline don’t work in this case, which means we need to artificially give them a baseline until they can reset. What you’re going to be doing is draining and, honestly, I wouldn’t have you do it, but hospitals aren’t equipped to deal with this volume of Sentinels with D-TISD. Often, this is done with short-term surface bonding. But you, my friend, are high even level to shield for up to two senses without a bond.”

“How do you—oh, fuck, the feral.” He buries his face in his hands for a moment, and oh yeah, oh, he needs to take some Advil soon. Later. After this shit show is done with. “Okay. Fine. So what do I do?”

Stiles heads into the first hospital room, flipping on the white noise generator and shutting the door behind him. There’s a girl sitting cross-legged on the bed, pillow in her lap, fingers twitching and clenching around it. She doesn’t look like she’s seeing anything, and a glance at the chart tells him she’s a one-sense sight sense Sentinel.

“Hey,” he says, and her head jerks in his direction like she’s operating on sound alone, her eyes nowhere near him. “My name’s Stiles, and I’m here to help.” She nods. “Okay. Basically I’m just going to sit in the chair next to you and stick my shield around you until you can control your senses. Which actually sounds kind of sketchier than I was intending.” Her lips twitch into what’s almost a smile, which, yay, is a start. “This will be a lot easier if I can touch you, but if you’re not cool with that, uh…we can do that. The not-touching thing.”

She stares at not-him for a moment, then nods, sticking her hand out in his direction.

Stiles walks over and drops down in the seat next to her, taking her hand. Which is awkward. Because she’s female and would be hot if she didn’t look absolutely terrified. “So, uh, this might take a sec, so just bear with me. Please.”

She nods again. Stiles closes his eyes, taking in a deep breath and trying to picture a bubble around his skin, moving outward to encompass the girl, too. Except bubble doesn’t make sense, because bubbles are round and so would already be intersecting with her, so maybe it’s like how Scott describes people’s magic auras being, like fire coming off of his skin, and he spreads the fire out, out, around her, and it’s warm but not burning, and her hand contracts in his and then relaxes, and she sighs.

“That’s…”

“You okay? Is it working?”

“Mmhmm.”

It’s hard to maintain, keeping the fire this far from his skin, so he shuts his mouth and focuses on breathing to keep the fire from retracting back in like a rubber band pulled taut.

Finally, she squeezes his hand again. “I’m good now.” He hesitates a moment, then slowly retracts the fire back to his skin, and it aches a little. It feels like if he had just exercised hard as was sore now, except there are no muscles to be sore, so it’s his skin and his muscles and his bones, and this is going to not be pleasant in a couple of hours. “Thank you.”

Stiles opens his eyes, letting go of her hand. “No problem. Happy to help. I’m going to go—” He flaps his good arm in the direction of the door. “That way.”

She smiles at him, and yep, hot. “Thank you. Again.”

He nods, stands, and almost falls over, which is two parts his vision shutting down for a second and one part his foot getting tangled in the chair leg. But he catches himself on the back of the chair and hurries out of the room before he can look like more of an idiot.

The one- and two-sense Sentinels are all next to each other, so Stiles just works down the line, trying to ignore the way his arm throbs and his head feels like it’s not attached to his body as he goes. He’s fine, but this whole thing is exhausting, and he kind of wants to curl up and sleep. But all of the Sentinels are as terrified as the first girl, and he’s always been a sucker for terrified people. It’s his goddamn weakness, other than curiosity; he learned it from Scott, goddamn him. He loves Scott, but he could have done without the desire to save the world and everyone in it.

The last guy looks horrified to see him, which would have been funnier is Stiles could…see. Like, much at all. Because there is a small possibility he’s overdone this.

“Why are you alone in here as a Guide? They could be after you. They could _get_ you.” He stares wide-eyed at Stiles, then tries to get up like he’s going to try to defend Stiles or something even though five minutes earlier he had been almost catatonic.

Stiles pushes (shoves) him back into the bed, saying, “I’m safe. Seriously. Are all Sentinels like this?”

“We protect Guides. That’s what we’re supposed to do.” He starts to move towards Stiles again, and Stiles stands and backs away, hands in front of him to ward him away.

“I’m fine. The he-man stuff is not necessary.” He trips on the heel of his shoe, stumbling a bit before straightening. “Are your senses okay now?”

“They’re good.”

“Great.” Stiles gives him two thumbs up, then spins, almost unbalancing himself because wow, equilibrium, what’s that. But he gets himself to the door, jerking it open.

He gets just outside the room when everything goes black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dun dun DUN.
> 
> Fun help desk story (because part of one of my jobs is listening to and returning calls for a help desk): one of the messages we had today was literally just someone going "I don't want to leave a message, I want to talk to someone," and then him hanging up without leaving a name or callback number. So guess who didn't get a call back.


	12. Chapter 12

“Here’s what we need to be looking for—where can a group of people contain five Guides and a Sentinel without attracting anyone’s attention? Especially given how quickly they got road blocks up; it’s not as though they can keep them in car trunks.”

Alex looks at Aaron. “I hate to be the one to ask this, but what’s the likelihood they’re still alive?”

Aaron looks at the files on the table in front of him. “better than usual; Guides who are taken specifically for being Guides are usually sold or held rather than killed, and the unsubs had ample opportunity to kill a lot more Guides. They took them, instead, and in a number they could control.”

“The Sentinel, though,” JJ says.

Aaron nods. “He’s most at risk in this scenario. They likely didn’t mean to take him, which means they may dispose of him. Sentinels outnumber Guides, and five-sense Sentinels, why they can be valuable, are more of a liability than an asset unless you have access to a high-level Guide.”

“So they’ll kill him?”

“That’s the most likely scenario. Even if they never show their faces, the Sentinel would still be able to identify them by smell or sound. Though the fact that we haven’t found his body is a good sign.”

JJ grimaces, then turns to the laptop in front of her. “We need to be looking through empty warehouses, abandoned houses.”

“Ones away from a residential area,” Alex adds. “Six people can make a lot of noise.”

“Unless they’re drugged.”

JJ starts typing, then recoils a little when the computer pings. She clicks on something. “Hey, Garcia. You’ve got me, Alex, and Hotch.” She turns the screen so they can all see Garcia’s face.

“Garcia, what do you have?”

“So you know how I’ve been going through the victims, trying to see if they have anything in common or significant beyond being Guides?” Aaron nods. “Well, I haven’t found anything. They go to the same university, take some of the same classes, two of them have been to the hospital for alcohol poisoning in the last year, but nothing stands out.”

Aaron takes a breath. “So why are you calling?”

“Because I’m not done yet. I started looking at the Sentinel who was taken, because he might have been an accident but he might not have been, and what I found was hinky. So I started with the basics, you know, birth certificate, medical records, and nothing. Nada. It’s like he first shows up when he filed emancipation papers at sixteen—and everything other than the fact that those exist is classified, by the way, classified in a way that I can’t get in—and half the stuff after that is classified, too.”

“Fake identity?”

JJ looks at Hotch and Alex. “Is there any chance he’s in WitSec?”

“Maybe, but then the Marshals would be all over this.”

“I can look into this,” Garcia says, “see if I can find what they’re hiding.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Aaron spins to see a man, late thirties or early forties, standing in the doorway wearing an Air Force dress uniform. Aaron hadn’t heard him walk up, which is unnerving. “Who are you?”

“Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, US Air Force.” He steps forward, looking at where Garcia is staring wide-eyed at him on the screen. “Anything you are trying to break into is above all of your pay grades.”

Garcia smiles. “I’m sure I could manage it.”

The Colonel shrugs, looking somehow both bored and insolent at the same time. “You’re welcome to the next ten hours of your life being lectures on committing treason.”

“If you’re the one lecturing me, I might even listen. You’re like a tall drink of water, and I’m feeling thirsty.”

“Garcia,” JJ admonishes, though she sounds like she’s trying not to laugh.

To his credit, the Colonel just looks amused. “I wouldn’t be the one giving you the lecture. That would probably be a few unhappy MPs. Or Major Davis. Apparently he gets to have those chats.” He’s looking at Aaron now, like he knows Aaron is in charge. Good instincts.

“Garcia, leave it alone for the moment. Focus on the other victims.”

She sighs. “Yes, sir.”

“Call us if you have anything else.”

“Will do.” She ends the call.

Aaron offers a hand to Sheppard. “SSA Aaron Hotchner with the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit.” Sheppard shakes his hand briefly, then has equally perfunctory handshakes with Alex and JJ. “You must be the Air Force Liaison.”

“Yeah. They went after one of our Generals and his Guide, and now they have one of ours.”

“Jonathan O’Neill is Air Foce?” JJ asks.

Sheppard’s eyes flick to her for a second before settling back on Aaron. “He’s one of ours.”

Suitably cryptic to match the fact that half of the victim’s life seems to be classified. “What can you tell us about him that isn’t classified?”

“He’s a five-sense Sentinel who’s likely struggling with his senses at the moment. He had been implanted with a subcutaneous transmitter to allow the Air Force to track his location if necessary, but it was removed, which means whoever has him is either really lucky, really good, or has insider knowledge.”

“Where did you find it?”

“An abandoned warehouse.” He pulls out a flash drive and hands it to JJ, who plugs it in and starts working.

Alex looks thoughtful. “The fact that they took the time to remove it is a good sign; it means they intend to keep him alive, at least for now.”

JJ glances up at her. “But alive for what?”

Nobody has an answer for her.

The Colonel looks around. “I was told the Prime Pair would be here.”

“They’re at the hospital helping Sentinels with sensory distress.”

Sheppard nods. “I’ll head there, then.”

“Why?”

“All five-sense Sentinels are required to check in with the Sentinel Prime when they enter territory he’s in.” And with that, he turns and walks out.

\--

Sheppard finds the Sentinel/Guide wing of the hospital without too much trouble, primarily because it’s the part that sounds like a wholesale white noise generator store, and from there it’s easy to find the nurse’s station.

The main nurse gives him a tired look, and he realizes she looks disconcertingly like Keller. Who left Atlantis almost as soon as it landed and they all got out of isolation for potentially have brought back Pegasus germs; Rodney was devastated for all of about three weeks before he remember this meant he was allowed to stare at other women again. They’re still trying to teach him not to be creepy about it (that’s currently Teyla’s job, when she’s on earth and not on the Hammond off in Pegasus keeping up with their allies for when they head back, and Sheppard doesn’t envy her one bit for it).

“Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, US Air Force, looking for the Prime Pair. I was told they were here.”

“Why?”

“I need to declare my entrance into territory that they’re in.”

She looks him over for a moment, then nods to a chair off to the side. “You can wait there.”

“Thanks.” He turns, heading over towards the chair. He doesn’t want to wait here long, especially because civilian hospitals remind him of his mother (as opposed to military infirmaries, which used to remind him of his still-super-classified brief stint as a POW that he doesn’t like to think about and now remind him of turning into an alien bug and watching Elizabeth dying), but the Sentinel Prime is apparently pretty strict about declaring entrance to the territory.

Sheppard had never particularly understood high-sense Sentinel territorialism, not until he had set foot on Atlantis and thought _this is mine, and I will abandon it over my dead body_.

A door opens in front of him, and a teenager stumbles out; Sheppard moves out of the way, but then the teen drops, and Sheppard grabs him so he doesn’t hit the ground. Automatically, he checks breathing and heartrate, but both sound good, if not a bit high.

It takes a second, and then the teen blinks up at him. “Y’re a pretty human being,” he slurs.

Bemused, Sheppard looks down at him. He tries to stand him upright, but the teen sways and then immediately falls back against Sheppard, which is apparently where he’s staying for the moment. “You’re like eighteen.”

“Doesn’ mean y’re not pretty. But ‘m not hittin’ on you. Tha’ would be rude.”

“Oh?”

“B’cause you might not be gay, and then you might be uncomf’t’ble. I have _manners_.”

The kid sounds somewhere between drunk and exhausted, and he’s definitely a Guide. Sheppard can feel the Guideness of him, the little bit of relief because no matter that the piece of Ancient tech in his pocket makes him functional solo, it’s not a real replacement for a bond. And it makes him want to look after the kid, because that’s what his instincts say to do with a Guide.

So he starts moving him in the direction of the chair, which is made difficult by the fact that the kid isn’t moving his feet to talk at all. “Let’s get you seated.”

“I don’t wanna sit. I’m tired.”

Sheppard isn’t sure whether amusement is the right reaction, but he’s also always struggled with knowing whether his reactions were appropriate. Seeing as his first reaction to meeting aliens was to start talking about fucking ferris wheels. “Yeah, well, I’m not going to keep standing here letting you use me as a cane, so either stand up or sit down.” The kid pushes off, trying to stand, and immediately slumps back on Sheppard. Which, yeah, is what he thought. “Okay, come on, sit down.”

“What’s going on here?”

Sheppard looks up from where he’s trying to manhandle the kid into a chair to see, fuck, the Prime Pair storming towards him, the Sentinel Prime between him and the Guide Prime. Greeting them is more important than getting the kid to sit at the moment, so he lets the kid cling on to him, saying, “My name is Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, US Air Force. I’m the Air Force liaison on the case and here to inform you that I’m a five-sense Sentinel entering your territory.” He glances down at the kid still leaning on him, who looks half-asleep. “He collapsed, and I’ve been trying to get him to sit.”

The Sentinel Prime gives him a stern look. “You shouldn’t have been touching a Guide without his permission.”

“He didn’t give me much of a choice.” The kid pokes him in the side, and he looks down to see him staring up at him. “Yes?”

“’re you gay?”

Sheppard suppresses a grin, because he actually thinks he likes this kid, in the sort of self-destructive way he has of liking people who might be smart and competent but have no social mores to speak of. Dave would be horrified by the people he calls friends. Even better. “No, I’m not.”

“’kay. Then I wasn’t hittin’ on you.”

The Guide Prime looks past the Sentinel Prime at Sheppard, then steps around him, even as the Sentinel Prime growls at him. “I’ll take him. Do you know what’s wrong with him?”

“Heartbeat is high, body temperature is normal, breathing is normal. He smells like his blood sugar is low.”

“I’ll take him.” The Sentinel Prime steps between Sheppard and the Guide Prime again, reaching out to take the kid, and when Sheppard hands the kid over the kid goes relatively willingly, if not without stumbling over his own feet. The Sentinel Prime catches him neatly and then herds him over to the chair, where he collapses.

The Guide Prime crouches next to him. “Stiles? How are you feeling?”

Stiles blinks at him. “Tired.” He rubs his eyes, and when he talks again his voice is a little more coherent. “Fuck, I’m tired.”

“I think you pushed yourself too hard and expended too much energy expanding your shields.” The Sentinel Prime heads over to the nurse’s station, and Sheppard hears him explaining what’s going on and asking if they have something to eat. “How are you feeling otherwise? Does your arm hurt?”

Stiles nods, and some of the loopiness is starting to fade from his expression. “’nbonded five-senses feel good.” He looks over at Sheppard. “You feel good.”

The Guide Prime quirks a smile. “Yes, they do, especially when you’re unbonded.”

“Also, there’s a bird on my head.”

“There’s a—” The Guide Prime looks confused, and Stiles reaches up, puts his arm up near his head, and then lowers it, holding it horizontal like there’s something sitting on it.

He smiles. “Bird.”

“I don’t—” And then there’s a bird there, on his arm, black and glossy and frankly gorgeous, and the Guide Prime recoils even as Sheppard physically restrains himself from reaching for his gun. “That’s your animal. That’s a piece of your _soul_. But I’ve never heard of them manifesting physically, not like that.

Stiles reaches over with his other arm to pet the bird, laughing with it snaps at him. “Ha, I’m not crazy.” The Sentinel Prime walks over with a handful of energy bars, holding one out towards Stiles, and Stiles looks at the bird and says, “Can you go away now so I can eat this before I pass out on someone less pretty than Mr. Military Person over there?”

The bird squawks at him once, then disappears, and Stiles takes an energy bar and starts eating.

The Guide Prime looks like he’s the one who’s about to pass out. “The animal came out. In public. I _saw_ it.”

The Sentinel Prime runs a hand through his Guide’s hair. “Hey, Chief, maybe save this for later.”

There’s a second’s pause, and then he nods, standing. “Right. Of course. Stiles, you should never have worked until you were nearly unconscious, that’s just not safe.”

“’m sorry,” he says around a mouthful of energy bar. “Thought you wanted me to finish.”

“You thought I—well, that’s my fault, then. You should only work to the degree you can without compromising your health and safety.” Stiles shrugs. “In an emergency, it may be necessary to work more, but we have other options. Thank you, though.”

Stiles shrugs again. “I’m fine.”

\--

Stiles kind of wants to curl up in a hole and never come out again, or at the very least become one with this chair. Because apparently exhausted loopy him decided the right idea was to cling on to the hot Air Force Colonel standing in the middle of the hallway and ramble about how he didn’t hit on men unless he knew they were gay. Bad move, loopy!him. Bad move.

So he shoots the man an awkward smile. “Sorry about the—” There are no words for the mess of what he had done, so he just sort of waves his good arm flailingly. “Before.”

The guy’s lips twitch. “No problem.”

“Hypoglycemic teenagers spend a lot of time clinging on to you asking you if you’re gay?”

“It’s an adult, usually.”

Stiles takes a bite of his second energy to avoid responding to that, because he doesn’t actually have a response to that. Also, Blair is staring at him like he broke the world or something, and he would really like to avoid that conversation. Because he apparently thought it was a good idea to announce the bird on his head, which had showed up at about the time he had collapsed on Colonel guy over there.

Loopy!Stiles has bad instincts.

What else is new.

“Are we done here? Can we go be somewhere else? Somewhere that doesn’t smell like hospital?” Stiles rubs his eyes. “Or can I go be somewhere that doesn’t smell like hospital? Like the car? I’ll go sit in the car.” He stands, wobbling a little, and both of the Sentinels move towards him like they’re going to grab him or something. Which, okay, is fair, given what just happened. “I’m not going to fall over.”

Blair glances at Jim, then says, “I’ll let Spencer know that we’re heading back to the police station.” Jim looks between Blair and Stiles like he can’t figure out who he’s supposed to protect, and Blair pats him on the shoulder. “I’ll just be a minute.”

Jim grabs the back of his neck for a second then lets him go, and Blair heads off down the hallway. Jim then turns his glare on Stiles. “What were you thinking?”

“That I was doing what he told me to do. There was no, like, hey, this is going to fu-screw you up and you’re going to pass out on a hot Air Force guy—sorry, I can’t remember your name, I’ll stop calling you that—if you do this too much, or even what too much is. Draining isn’t a super helpful description.” Everything goes kind of wavy again, and Stiles grabs at the back of the chair. His head is starting—continuing—to throb, and he mostly just wants to go curl up somewhere dark and not have to deal with this shit. Because this isn’t even dangerous shit, because dangerous shit he knows how to deal with. He hates dealing with it, but at least that he can take a baseball bat to. Him being stupid and having stupid instincts and stupid Guide powers that he’s using blindly because nobody explained to him how to use him properly for more than five minutes isn’t something he can take a baseball bat to.

So he just stands there in silence, and so does Jim and Hot Air Force guy, and then Blair comes out and they head to their respective cars, and Stiles is asleep before he manages to get his seatbelt buckled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay loopy!Stiles.


	13. Chapter 13

“We shouldn’t have brought him here.”

Jim pulls in to the station parking spot, shutting off the car before looking over at Blair. “It was the right choice. He needs to be trained, and you know this would have taken hours longer if he hadn’t been here.”

“But he’s just a kid.” Blair twists around to look at Stiles, who’s fast asleep in the back seat, hanging limp in the seatbelt Jim had fastened for him. “He’s a kid, and we dragged him into a kidnapping investigation.”

Jim resists the urge to point out that Stiles had been in from the moment the convention was attacked. “He’s almost eighteen; he could join the military in a few months, and vote, and sign conracts. He has to learn this or he’ll be a danger to those around him.”

Blair sighs. “I know.” He unbuckles his seatbelt then leans over to rest his head on Jim’s chest. Jim cups the back of his head, dialing up touch just enough so he can feel every individual strand of hair, and the little bit of conditioner Blair never manages to wash out.

“You can have an existential crisis later, Chief. We have Guides to save.”

Blair takes a second, then straightens. “And a Sentinel.”

“And a Sentinel.” Jim climbs out of the car, heading back to where Stiles is still sleeping in the back seat. He hates the idea of touching a sleeping Guide without his permission, especially given how many hands have been on him, because that’s not supposed to happen. Guides can be touch-empathetic, even unbonded ones, and it can show up randomly at any time. But he wants even less to leave a sleeping Guide alone in a car, so he pulls open the door and touches Stiles’s shoulder.

Stiles wakes up swinging, telegraphing just enough for Jim to grab his hand to keep it from connecting. He keeps struggling, failing, so Jim pins his hands to his chest. “You’re safe. Stiles, you’re safe. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”

Stiles freezes, then jerks away, and Jim lets him go. He grabs on to his injured arm, fingers flexing, and the smell of adrenaline and pain hit the air. “What—” His voice shakes, and he swallows. “What’s going on?”

“You were sleeping.”

Stiles blinks at him. “Oh, shit, did I hit you?”

“You missed.”

It’s meant to be a joke, mostly, but Stiles blanches. “Shit, shit, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t touch me.”

Blair nudges Jim, who moves out of the way enough for Blair to poke his head in. “Hey. Do you know where you are?”

“Oregon. Eugene, Oregon. People are missing.”

“They are, but making sure you’re okay is what’s important now.”

Stiles shakes his head, undoing his seatbelt and straightening. “No. No, I’m good. I’m fine. People are missing.”

Blair exchanges a look with Jim, who stands and moves away to give the illusion of privacy. “Can you tell me what’s going on?” Blair asks, and Jim can hear the discomfort in his voice because Blair likes fixing people and he doesn’t know how to fix Stiles. In reality, he likely can’t. Some things can’t be fixed by guided meditation and a bond.

“You want to talk about my PTSD?” Stiles asks instead of an answer, and he smells like metallic pain and acrid fear-sweat. “Because I really don’t. Just—don’t wake me up like that, and if I have a panic attack, leave me alone.”

Blair sighs. “I don’t think being here is healthy for you.”

“Nobody ever accused me of being known for my self-preservation skills. If you try to keep me out of this, I’ll get involved on my own. I’m good at that—you could ask my dad. Or, actually, please don’t, because then I’ll get a lecture, and I really don’t need a lecture.” Then he leans forward, moving so Blair’s only two choices are to move out of the way or be climbed over.

\--

Jonathan is blind.

He hasn’t been this bad off since Ba’al, except Ba’al was old him (real him) and so this body is unprepared for the shock of it. He’s trained himself well, but intentionally fucking with your senses when you have no Guide to catch you is a bad idea, and even he’s not that reckless.

So it’s a surprise to open his eyes and see nothing, blackness, what he used to think death looked like until he died.

There’s a body wrapped around his, Cynthia Park, warm, breathing, _alive_. And feeling like Guide, and he concentrated on that for a moment, trying to center himself on that even though he can’t ground on her.

Finally, he whispers, “Where are we?”

She stiffens. “Some kind of basement, I think,” she whispers back. “We were in a warehouse but left after they pulled something out of your arm.”

Jonathan remembers that, vaguely. “How many are there?”

“Can’t you tell?”

He shakes his head, which sends a bolt of pain through his skull. “Greyed out. Can’t see a thing, and the rest of my senses are normal.”

“We thought you were zoning; that’s why they stuck me with you.” She shifts a bit. “There are eight, I think.”

He had seen AR-15s during the attack, but, “Weapons?”

“They have…big guns. All of them. Sorry, I don’t—my mom’s a hippy. She doesn’t believe in guns.”

Jonathan resists the urge to remind her that guns exist whether you believe in them or not, instead saying, “That’s fine. Where are the rest of the Guides who were taken with us?”

“Another room. I don’t know where.”

“Okay.” Jonathan takes in a breath and lets it out slowly, sitting up as best as he can against the wall behind him with Cynthia still wrapped around him. She scrambles to adjust. “I’m going to get us out of here.”

“How—” She starts loudly, then breaks off and loers her voice when he shushes her. “How are you planning to do that?”

“Danger-keyed Counterzoning.”

“Isn’t that some military thing?”

“Yeah. Once I start it, I should be able to hold it for half an hour”—he hopes, though he’s never done it for that long in this body; in his real body he once held it for three days—“but then I’m going to drop, so the priority will have to be getting out and to a phone. People are probably going to start shooting at us, so I’m going to need you to stick behind me and stay close. Do you understand?”

“I—”

“I need to know you understand.”

“Yes. Yes, I understand.”

\--

“What are you doing in Oregon?”

Sheppard stiffens at the sound of McKay’s voice coming through his earpiece, glancing over at the Sentinel Prime to see if he’s listening. From all indications he’s not, but that doesn’t mean much, so Sheppard steps out a side door, standing in a back parking lot. He’s next to a dumpster, which smells like rot and old coffee grinds; he dials his smell down as low as he can without compromising it.

“How do you know where I am? And this is a secure channel.”

McKay scoffs. “She told me.”

Anyone who both knows where he is and would for any reason talk to McKay is male. “She? She who?”

“Atlantis, Colonel. Keep up. Why are you in Oregon?”

“How does Atlantis have access to my tracking information? John starts to run his hand through his hair, remembers he’s in uniform and it’s supposed to be at least marginally neat, and stops. “And how are you on this line? It’s supposed to only go to the Daedalus.”

McKay makes one of his irritated noises. “The city patched me in. And you’re hers, Colonel, everyone knows that. Oregon.”

“I’m in the midle of an investigation.”

“Oh, yes, yes, General O’Neill’s clone. They sent you alone?”

“Only if you don’t count the FBI and the Prime Pair.”

There’s a how-could-you-think-I-would-count-them noise and then a flash of beaming light as McKay says, “Incoming,” and Ronon appears in front of him. Which, what the fuck?

Ronon grins at him, opening his eyes, and at least he’s dressed in Earth clothes, a dark button-down shirt and black pants. “Hey, buddy.”

“What are you doing here? McKay, what’s he doing here?” John looks around to see if anyone noticed the flash, but nobody’s coming running out, so maybe not. “How did you get here?”

“Atlantis was concerned. You never leave without backup.”

A headache starts pounding behind John’s temple. “Are you telling me Atlantis beamed him here from outside the San Francisco Bay? Atlantis doesn’t have long-range becoming capabilities.”

“Apparently she does when it comes to you. I’m looking into it. Stop forgetting to check in.” And then McKay is gone, leaving John standing outside a police station in goddamn Eugene, Oregon with an alien and no good way to explain him.

Why can’t he be off-world instead?

“C’mon,” John says, opening up the door to the station, “let’s go.”

John leads Ronon over to the Prime Pair first, because in the pecking order of the room, they’re basically top for John. He’s never put much stock in the whole pack/pride shtick, but he does have a healthy amount of respect for the strongest pair in North America and maybe the world. And supposedly the Sentinel Prime used to be military.

“This is Ronon,” John tells them, ignoring the fact that the Sentinel Prime moves between them and the Guide Prime. It’s nothing personal. “He’s a colleague of mine.”

“You don’t look Air Force.”

“He’s a contractor.”

“And a Sentinel,” the Guide Prime puts in.

“A senser?” Ronon says, and John suppresses a wince because they’ve never trained him out of calling them that. At least he didn’t go with the Satedan word, some unspeakably complicated word that also involves a hand gesture. “Yeah.”

“Senser.” The Guide Prime leans around the Sentinel Prime. “I’ve never—”

“Chief.”

“Right.” The Guide Prime laughs a little. “Well, welcome. The more, the merrier. You can help us sort through these possible properties.” He gestures at the table covered in boxes of files.

Just what Ronon loves doing; sitt around sorting through files. John points towards the back. “Coffee’s over there.”

“Thanks.” Ronon heads over towards the coffee pot, John tracking him as he goes. Ronon has gotten more used to Earth in the past couple years, but he’s still very much an alien, and he can have unexpected reactions to normal Earth stuff.

But he just stops, pours himself a cup of coffee, and heads back. He sets the coffee on the table, looking at John. “It’ll work over there.” He gestures over to the corner of the room where the Guide kid is sitting wedged up in the corner, fast asleep.

“Why?”

“There’s a—” His expression twists in frustration, and then he makes a complicated hand gesture that John knows means Guide in Satedan. “—alone over there. It doesn’t sit right with me.” He shrugs, then grabs a box in one hand and his coffee in the other and walks over to the table closest to the teen.

From the table, the Sentinel Prime says, “He’d better not bother him.”

John grabs his own box of files, dropping it down at his corner of the table. “He won’t. He has no territorial impulse but a fairly strong protective one, especially when it comes to Guides. He just wants to keep him safe.”

\--

Stiles waks up to pain in his neck and the feeling of someone watching him. The room he’s in is loud, and he vaguely remembers sitting down on the floor in the corner of the makeshift second work room, so he must have fallen asleep there.

The first thing he sees when he opens his eyes is a man—tall, tan, lean and dangerous-looking, with a long mass of dreadlocks—watching him out of the corner of his eye as he ostensibly reads through a file. Stiles opens his mouth, and what comes out is, “You’re a terrifying human being.” Which is not what he meant to say.

The man grins at him, sharp and toothy. “Thanks.”

“Are you a Fed?”

“I’m a contractor working with Sheppard.” He says the word contractor like he’s not familiar with it, like it fits wrong in his mouth. “Why are you here alone?”

Stiles pulls himself out of the corner, stretching and wincing as his back pulls. “Bad dreams.” He looks around at the information pinned up about the missing Sentinel and Guides. “Reality’s not much better.”

The man shifts a little in his chair, like he’s getting ready to attack something. “Someone hurt you?”

“You could say that.” He feels to small sitting there, so he stands, his back cracking. The guy’s hands do something intricate in front of him. “Is that sign language? Actually, wait, do it again.” The guy repeats the gesture. “No, that’s not sign language. Or well, not American Sign Language. British Sign Language? Quebec? Some kind of Native or Hawai’ian Sign Language? Or is that like shrugging or something, and I just look like an idiot babbling about sign language? Though it looks like it should mean something.”

The man stares at him for a second, then says, “It means—Sheppard?”

Air Force guy doesn’t look at him, but says something the room is too loud for Stiles to hear.

“Guide.” He shapes the sign again, slower.

Stiles mimics it, and it’s awkward; he feels ungainly and awkward—status quo for him—trying to twist his fingers the way the guy did. “Guide. Huh.” He signs Guide in ASL, saying, “This is the sign I know for Guide. My mom started having issues with, uh, PNFA—progressive nonfluent aphasia—where basically she had trouble speaking once she got really sick, so we tried to learn sign language to help her. Which didn’t really work because of the dementia thing. And you have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

The guy shrugs. “No.”

Stiles rakes a hand through his hair. He must be more tired than he thought, to be talking to a stranger about his mom in a room with Sentinels. Or to fall asleep in a room full of strangers, even if they are cops and feds and military.

“Well, it was nice to meet you, but I’m going to go drown myself in a cup of coffee now.” He starts over towards the coffee pot, and the guy’s arm brushes him, and he’s _running, shoulder throbbing, and trees rush past him in blindingly crisp detail as he moves, footfalls sure and quick, but they’re coming, the Wraith are coming, and he’s not going to die today, he’s not—_

“Oh, motherfucker.” Stiles leans over, hands braced on his thighs, breathing hard. “Mother _fucker_. What were those?”

The guy blinks at him, wide-eyed, and then the military guy slides between the two of htem, close but not quite touching. “Are you okay?”

Stiles ignores him, looking past him at the guy, who still looks a bit freaked out. “Were those wendigo? They kind of look like pictures I’ve seen of wendigo, but you were calling them Wra—”

Military guy’s hand closes of Stiles’s mouth, and Stiles gets a flash of _cold pain dying he’s so old_ before he jerks away, chest heaving. “Anything you saw,” the man says, very quietly, “is classified. Talking about it with anybody other than myself and Ronon, or within the hearing of any Sentinels other than us, is illegal. Do you understand?”

What the fuck? “What are you—what just happened?”

“You’re a touch empath, I assume, and a fairly strong one at that.”

“No, I’m not. Or I was.” He looks around but can’t see Blair or Jim; the feds are all staring at them, though, which is just fantastic. “I’m going to go be somewhere that isn’t here.”

He moves away from military guy and the “contractor”, skirting a wide berth around them so there’s no more accidental touching, because that was really fucking uncomfortable. And also vaguely horrifying, made even more horrifying by the realization that the guy—Ronon—is a Sentinel, and a decently strong one at that, and so in some other universe they could theoretically bond, something which Stiles is super not fucking okay with. He spends enough time running through the forest trying to escape monsters.

He’s almost at the door when a cop sticks his head in, saying, “We have reports of gunfire on the outskirts of town.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm doing a shortened Nano this month, which is why this chapter took so long (also I wrote like half of it today). I might get one more chapter done this month, but I'm not sure.


	14. Chapter 14

The kid is scary fucking strong.

John’s locked so tight touch-empaths haven’t been able to get in for decades; it’s a standard part of RTI training, and they hadn’t gotten in even while trying. So the fact that this kid got in and felt…whatever he felt is frankly terrifying.

He feels kind of bad, too, because if he had known the kid wouldn’t have touched him.

Not that there’s time to do anything about it now, because they’re all heading out and the mission takes priority over an apology.

John isn’t dressed for a fight, so he borrows a tac uniform from the station and changes as they’re suiting up.

When he gets out, the Guide Prime is telling the kid, “You’re staying here. We’re not bringing you into a firefight.”

The kid, who apparently has no sense of self-preservation, scowls at him. “You’re no cop, and they’re bringing you there.”

“Because they’ll need me if something goes wrong.”

John looks over at the lead FBI agent. Hotchner. “Are we sure this is the place?”

“It’s on the list we were looking at.”

“And if it’s not it and we drag all available assets to a domestic assault?”

Hotchner shakes his head. “We’re leaving people behind. And if it is the kidnappers, we can’t risk it.”

Fair enough. And it’s the FBI’s ballgame until something too classified happens, and there’s no time to argue.

They set up a perimeter when they get to the house, and John can hear intermittent handgun fire from inside the house. He accepts a bulletproof vest from the FBI, trying to hide a smile at Ronon’s disdainful look.

The agent—Morgan, John thinks—shoves it at him. “You have to put this on him. You can’t go in without it.”

Ronon bares his teeth. “I don’t need it.”

Agent Morgan looks like he’s actually going to try to wrestle it on to Ronon himself, which won’t go well, so John steps in between them, pushing the vest at Ronon. “Put it on. We can argue about this later.”

Agent Hotchner steps up next to them. “I agree. Colonel, you and your colleague will be with Agents Reid and Morgan entering through the back, while the rest of us enter through the front. The local police will hold the perimeter.” John nods. “Remember—the hostages are the top priority.”

“Understood.”

They make their way around, and Ronon seems to have gotten an earth gun from who knows where, so at least there’s that. John would really not want to have to be the one to explain to General O’Neil why he let Ronon shoot people with a Satedan gun. Or a Traveler gun. Whatever it is.

They make entry on Agent Hotcher’s mark, Agent Morgan leading followed by John and then Ronon, with the unbelievably skinny Guide Dr. Reid behind them. The need to keep Dr. Reid safe seems to be something they all wordlessly agree on. Though if John had his way, the Doctor wouldn’t be anywhere near this.

They clear the first hallway, then turn the corner to see a young man with a girl shoved behind him facing off against a tall white guy with a handgun. The man spins at the sound of them approaching, but before John can get a shot off at him the young man has him in a headlock, clearly pressing hard enough with muscled forearms for the man to only struggle for a few seconds before going limp.

The guy drops him on the ground, kicking his gun away, and he looks really disconcertingly familiar. But they all level their guns on them; he presses the girl up against the wall, standing between her and them.

“Put those away,” he growls.

Agent Morgan takes a step towards him, and he pushes the girl back even further down the hallway, growling audibly. “Son, you need to step away from her.”

“My name is Jonathan O’Neill. Put your guns away.”

John lowers his gun immediately, not holstering it because there are definitely more in the house, no matter that he can’t hear any more gunshots. “Sir, we need to get you out of here.”

O’Neill’s eyes flick to him, and his pupils are blown wide. Which is a bad sign, given that he’s a five-sense Sentinel and probably not particularly stable at the moment, especially with guns still being pointed at a Guide who’s apparently under his protection. But then he very deliberately relaxes. “Not sir. Get her out of here. I need to get the rest.”

Morgan holsters his gun, moving even closer to O’Neill. “We have another team working on getting the rest of them out, but for right now we need to move the two of you to safety.” He touches his earpiece. “Hotch, we have the Sentinel and one of the Guides. Moving out of the building now.” He reaches forward and almost touches O’Neill, who jerks away from him. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

O’Neill’s lips press tight. “My senses are pretty jacked up right now; you touch me, it’s going to hurt.” He turns to look at the Guide. “Cynthia, we have to keep moving.” She whispers something, voice too slurred for John to pick up what she’s saying with any degree of accuracy. “I’m not going to kill anyone else in front of you. I know it hurt, but if we don’t keep moving you’re going to still be in danger.”

It takes a second, and then she starts walking towards the exit. O’Neill takes up a position behind her, eyes focusing on John. “You’re with us. Them.”

John nods, walking so he can watch O’Neill’s back. And Agent Morgan’s. “Yes, sir. Uh, yeah.” They get into the sunlight, hurrying them out and away from the house; O’Neill flinches, ducking his head and muttering a curse under his breath. “How keyed up are you?”

His jaw clenches. “I needed a way to get them out. You’re, what, a Colonel, a Major? When did we get you?”

“Lieutenant Colonel. I was on the first expedition out. I think that was after your time.” He’s trying to keep him distracted, because things can get fucked if he’s in the middle of Danger-Keyed Counterzoning and thinks they’re under attack when they’re not. John’s been there. It’s not pretty. “We’re going to need to get you to a hospital.”

“I need to go back inside.”

Yeah, John thought he was going to say that. “Sir, we can’t let you do that. As far as they’re concerned you’re a random student.”

O’Neill’s cheek twitches. “Then stop calling me sir.” An EMT hurries over to them, and O’Neill mutters something in what sounds like Arabic. John’s Arabic is somewhere between rusty and nonexistent; he was always better at Urdu and Pashto. “You planning on shining a light in my eyes?”

“Not unless you hit your head,” the EMT says, “but I do need to take your vitals.”

“Oh that sounds pleasant.” O’Neill looks at John. “I need to know what’s going on.”

John knows that’s not just a desire; he won’t be able to settle until he knows that the Guides he sees as his protectees, even temporarily, are safe. “I’ll let you know.” He heads off towards Ronon and the agents, who are standing with an EMT near the Guide. Cynthia. O’Neill had called her Cynthia. He pulls Agent Morgan aside a couple of steps. “Have you heard from the rest of your team? I haven’t heard any resistance.”

Agent Morgan glances over at Cynthia, then lowers his voice to say, “They’re gone.”

“What do you mean, gone?”

“I mean Hotch—Agent Hotchner—said that it looks like they just disappeared. There’s evidence that people were still here, coffee’s still hot, but they’re just gone. We’re looking for some sort of underground passageway that they must have smuggled the Guides out of once the breakout started. They could use your help.”

John nods, glancing back at O’Neill. “Yeah, I can help with that. Ronon, stay here.” He looks back at Agent Morgan. “They’re just _gone_?” Agent Morgan nods. John has a scary feeling he knows what that is, if they haven’t found a passageway yet, though he’ll still go help look. “Fuck.”

“I know.”

John is pretty sure he doesn’t.

\--

We’re going to the hospital.”

Stiles blinks at the cop who’s standing an awkward distance away from him. “What? What happened?”

They got the sentinel, and they want you to stay with him in case something happens.”

Stiles shoots to his feet, grabbing his backpack and slinging it over his uninjured shoulder; the moment strains his injured arm, but it’s fine. Probably. “Is he okay?”

The cop nods. “He’s fine; it’s just a precaution.” Stiles steps towards him, towards the door, and the cop takes an obvious step back. Fantastic.

But Stiles isn’t going to ask about that just yet. “And the Guides? Did they get the Guides?”

“One. The Prime Pair are with her now. Let’s go.”

They make good time to the hospital, though the cop spends the entire time moving away whenever he gets within six inches of Stiles. Stiles knows most people would like being in a cop car, even in the front, but it’s familiar to him.

The cop drops him off in front of Sentinel/Guide area of the hospital, which Stiles is getting uncomfortably used to, and offers a bit insincerely to escort him in. Stiles declines, mostly because he doesn’t want to keep doing the awkward song and dance where the cop trying really hard not to touch him. He’s a hundred percent sure Blair and/or Jim talked to them.

Instead, he heads in to the hospital, his least favorite place in the world except Gerard Argent’s basement and the inside of his head, and goes over to the nurse’s station. The nurses there aren’t the same as earlier—and god, that was still today, fuck his life—and so he heads over, saying, “I was told to come here to help the Sentinel who was brought in. Blair—the Guide Prime—ordered it. I think.”

The nurse’s eyes flick up to him, and she looks super judgmental. “ID.”

“What? Oh.” He pulls out his ID, handing it over to her. She types something in to her computer, then hands it back. “Thanks.”

She nods, eyes flicking over her screen. “I don’t like this. You’re too young. They shouldn’t be sending a kid to do an adult’s job.”

Stiles bristles a little at that. “I’m almost eighteen. Sort of.”

“I wouldn’t want an eighteen-year-old working in a hospital, either. Are you a touch empath?” He hesitates for a moment, then nods, and she types something. Something prints out of a tiny printer, and she hands it over; it’s a paper wristband like they give at ice skating, where the sticky part never ends up lined up right and then it’s itchy and never the right size. “Keep that on at all time while you’re here. It contains the necessary information in case there is a problem.”

He puts it on, shoving the paper he pulled off in his pocket. It’s uncomfortable, stabby and not bending like his wrist, but it could be worse. “And where is he?”

“Room 117. If he has a feral episode and you are unable to leave the room, press one of the blue buttons on the wall. We will be immediately notified.”

“Thanks.” He heads towards the room, twisting the wristband around over and over. The door is closed, and Stiles can hear a white noise generator whirring behind it. He slides open the door, stepping inside.

Sitting sideways on the bed, legs hanging off the side, is a man, maybe twenty-five, shoulders hunched and tight, fingers clasped on his knees. He looks up when Stiles walks in.

He grimaces. “Tell me you’re not my doctor.”

Stiles laughs, closing the door behind him. “Hardly. I’m Stiles, and I’m here as a Guide. In case anything goes wrong. Not that I think anything will go wrong.”

The guy—Jonathan, Stiles remembers—almost smiles. “I doubt you’ll be able to do much good.”

“I’m sorry enough to do…whatever. Believe me.”

The Sentinel doesn’t look like he believes him, but he nods anyway. “Just going to warn you—trying to walk me down or whatever astral shit Guides do isn’t going to do much good.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m currently hanging on by a thread to the last vestiges of my Danger-Keyed Counterzoning.”

Oh, fuck. That’s the thing Blair told him about but never got around to explaining how to help with. “Did you tell them that?” Did Blair send him in unprepared again?

He shakes his head. “No time. And I wasn’t exactly functional when they brought me here.” He looks down at his hands, which seem from Stiles’s vantage to be trembling.

“Great. So we’ll find someone who knows how to deal with that.”

The Sentinel shakes his head. “I had an anchor point to ground on, but it was taken. Even if I’m helped now, if I wake up ungrounded, I’ll probably go feral.”

Exasperation floods Stiles. “And you didn’t think to tell anyone?”

The Sentinel turns wide, pupil-blown eyes on him. “I forgot.”

Okay, he seems not super stable at the moment, so of course Stiles does the opposite of the smart thing and starts walking towards him. “So…what can I do to help?”

The Sentinel snorts. “Unless you’re strong enough to hold a surface bond with a five-sense—”

“Okay.” The Sentinel turns disbelieving eyes on him. “I’m scored at ninety…something.” His statement loses a little power because he doesn’t actually know what fucking level he is, but it’s still true. “Surface bond is the kind you can get rid of, right? Like after a few days?”

Something passes across the guy’s face. “You, kid.”

“Stiles,” he says, “not kid.” He sits down in the chair next to Jonathan, who jerks his leg away. Stiles tries not to take it personally. “I’m—look, this is probably a bad idea, and I honestly have no idea what the fuck is going on, but if Scott were here—and a Guide, and strong enough—he would do this, because that’s what he does, and Allison is dead, and I want to _fix_ things, and so as long as this is something we can make go away, I’ll…do this.”

The guy’s hands are definitely shaking now. “There are things in my head you don’t want to see.”

That almost makes Stiles laugh, except he has a little more self-control than that. “Yeah, same back to you. If you have a better suggestion, I’m open to it. I’m sure you don’t want to spend the next few days stuck to someone you don’t know.”

“Do you?”

Stiles gives him a bright smile. “I am trying really hard not to think about it.” Jonathan’s entire body looks like it’s shaking now. “Your choice.”

Jonathan stares at him for a long time, so long Stiles starts thinking about it, and no, that’s bad, don’t do that, because he wants to do something right, something that might balance out some of the shit in his head and the blood on his hands, and he doesn’t know what the hell else to do and it’s been a really long goddamn day and he just wants it to end.

So maybe he’s making bad decisions and maybe he never stopped making bad decisions, and maybe he doesn’t care because things suck and he’s tired and nobody will touch him.

“You okay, kid?”

Stiles looks at Jonathan, whose pupils are blown wide and hands are shaking and jaw is twitching and says, “We all have things in our heads we don’t want there.”

Jonathan nods. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

Stiles blinks at him. “Okay? Okay. Yes. Do you know how to do this, because I don’t.”

Jonathan laughs, the sound like it scraped its way from his throat. “It’s taking all I have not to try to initiate a bond with you. You just need to let me in.”

Let him in. Stiles can do that. Probably. He let the Nemeton in.

Maybe not the best analogy.

Jonathan closes his eyes, and for a moment there’s nothing, and then Stiles can feel it, like warmth on his skin and honey in his veins and almost-arousal, and he tilts his head back, tension dropping from his shoulder, because it feels good, it feels like heaven, and he wants more.

“Let me in, kid,” a voice says, and Stiles tenses because he almost forgot someone was there, lost as he was in sensations, and it’s not safe to do that. It’s never safe to do that. “In, kid, not out.”

“I can’t—” His voice sounds sluggish now, almost slurred, and he feels like he’s going to get lost in it, the warmth, because he’s so cold.

“I’ll keep you safe. That’s my job as a Sentinel.” There’s something wrong with the voice now, pain, and it makes Stiles want to reach out and make it better. “But you need to let me in.”

In. Stiles has to let him in. He can do that. He can let the warmth in, and the honey on his lips and the pressure on the back of his neck like a hand or a blanket, and he opens his mouth and lets him in.

Warmth floods him, pleasure and relief and sand against his skin, and then he pitches forwards towards Jonathan’s knee.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that took so long, but I was doing Camp Nanowrimo (and I won, whoo, even though I did 30k instead of 50k). I am partway through the next chapter, though, so it won't be nearly as long.
> 
> Fanfics I currently want to write because I don't have enough to write already:  
> -Stiles raised by Hales after the death of his parents set in the Werewolves 101 verse (I've written a chapter but don't want to post it unless I actually keep writing it)  
> -Harry Potter diverging at the beginning of OoTP with Snape redeeming himself  
> -Slytherin!Harry Potter all 7 years (massive project, why do I want to do this to myself)  
> -Ex-auror John Watson (yes, I've been reading a lot of Harry Potter fanfiction recently)  
> -Actually finish Take You In  
> -Work on Mirror-And-Steve Boy


	15. Chapter 15

Jonathan is laying in the hospital, one hand tangled in the hair of the teenager he’s now surface-bonded to, when Carter walks in. The bonding softened his fall enough to keep him from both catatonia and going feral, but he still crashed hard enough for them to keep him under observation.

He smiles at her. “Hey, Carter. Heard they finally made you The Man.”

Her eyes sparkle at him. “Gave me a desk and everything. Though, really, Jack is the one who should be considered The Man.”

It’s not as weird hearing about real!him referred to that way as it used to be, like they’re two different person. Because, he supposes, they are now. “What are you doing here? Not that I’m complaining, but don’t you have a base to run?”

“I put Cam in charge; he could do with some experience.” She looks momentarily uncomfortable. “Cam Mitchell. He joined after you, uh—”

“Yeah.” Jonathan cards his fingers through his Guide’s hair, relishing in the feeling of each silky strand moving against his skin. “Jack send you here so we can both get used to the idea of me being near Daniel again?”

“I volunteered. And you have to admit you reacted badly last time you saw him. Uh, sir.”

“I promise not to try to bond with his Guide,” Jonathan drawls. “And I think technically you outrank me now.”

“Right.” She does that looking-uncomfortable thing again. “How are you doing?”

“Trying to figure out how you survived your dissertation.”

Carter laughs. “You’re getting a dissertation?” They can both hear the sir at the end of her question, and they both ignore it.

“War studies. Looking at internal and external state building post-rebellion.” He grins at her. “Heard you were still having trouble with that.”

“Yeah, they’re, uh, stubborn. We’re still fighting the Alliance and picking up the pieces after the last holy war.” She glances down at the Guide sleeping in the chair next to the bed, face down on the mattress. “He looks young.”

“I think that’s because he is.” His Guide’s breathing hitches, and Jonathan smooths his thumb across the kid’s forehead, trying to soothe him back to sleep. The kid looks like he needs it, face pale and shadowed. “It’s only for a couple days, until I can level off without him and transfer back to my anchor point.”

“Do we need to read him in?”

“That depends on how bad it gets when I disengage contact from him. Assuming you need my debrief any time soon.”

“Today, preferably.” Jack opens the door to the room, slipping inside with Daniel pressed a little bit behind him. Jonathan nods to them, glad the kid is bonded to him so he has no urge to bond—rebond—to Daniel. “Did they go after you?”

“No, but—” The Guide twitches, breathing shifting, and Jack and Jonathan tense. “Hey, kid.”

The Guide turns his head just enough to blink blearily at him. “Stiles. Not kid.” And then he stiffens, and Jonthan feels his own muscles tense because his Guide smells scared. Something is a threat to his Guide. “Who’s in here?”

Sam moves, and Stiles bolts upright so fast Jonathan has to practically climb out of bed to maintain contact, hand now resting on the side of his neck. This would be so much easier if the kid was in bed with him, but he’s not going to ask that. “My name is General Samantha Carter, US Air Force.”

His Guide shoots him a look. “You seem to have a lot of Air Force Generals interested in you.”

He wants to know how his Guide knows that, seeing as neither Sam nor Jack are in uniform, but for right now he just nods. “Occupational hazard. Though in this case they’re family too, more or less.”

“Family.” His Guide’s eyes go wide, huge in his pale face. “Fu—damn it. I need to call my dad. He’s going to kill me.” He looks at Jonathan. “Figuratively. Please don’t growl at my dad or whatever. Actually, I could just not mention you.” He nods. “That could work.”

“Why aren’t you telling your father?”

“Because what I don’t tell my father won’t get him trapped as a sacrifice under a sentient tree stump. I mean, actually it will. Whatever. Let’s not quibble over details. I can feel you in my head. That’s so weird.” He twists enough to see Jack and Daniel. “Wait, how long was I asleep? How did you get here? You were in Oregon before.”

Something in Jonathan clenches at the thought of his Guide having met real!him first. Even though real!him has no interest in him. Even though real!him has Daniel.

His Guide rolls his eyes at him. “He’s not going to steal me or whatever possessive caveman thought you were having. And what do you mean, real!you?”

\--

The Generals exchange glances, and then the woman sighs. “Your call, Jack.”

General O’Neill grimaces at Jonathan. “This is your fault, you know.”

Jonathan shrugs, hand still pressed against Stiles’s neck, and it feels good and warm and kind of weird and Stiles really hopes this vague thought-transfer thing is one way because it’s hard not to think about wanting that hand on other parts of his body.

“Can you, uh—” Stiles waves an awkward hand. “What’s going on?”

From where he’s apparently hiding in the back of the room, Daniel says, “That’s what they’re debating whether to tell you.”

Stiles drops his head down on the mattress, Jonathan’s hand sliding up into his hair. Which feels awesome. “Oh, this is classified, isn’t it? I don’t want to know classified things. Well, I do. I want to know all the classified things. I want to know everything. But secrets. Everything’s a fucking secret.” He sighs. “Look, we can try to stop touching, see how well the shields hold. I’ll go hide in the hallway or something so I can’t hear what you’re talking about.”

Jonathan goes so pale he’s almost gray, hand closing hard around Stiles’s collarbone. “No. You’re not—no. Jack, read him in.”

“If you insist,” General O’Neil drawls, and then Daniel pulls a packet of paper out of his briefcase and hand sit to General O’Neill, who hands it to Stiles.

He flips through it, skimming first; it says it’s an NDA, but he wants to make sure it reads like an NDA. “I’m guessing this is basically, telling whatever you tell me is illegal, I could go to jail, don’t do that, bad.”

Jonathan nods, half-smiling. “Something like that.”

“Fine, I’ll sign it. Um, if I’m allowed to.”

General Carter’s eyebrows go up. “If you’re allowed to?”

“You have to be eighteen to sign contracts, right? Without a parent, I mean. I don’t know if it’s the same with NDAs.”

There’s a second, and then he gets a rush of guilt-horror-fear from Jonathan, so strong he flinches away. Jonathan lets out a hoarse cry of pain and then he’s leaning over to haul Stiles up on to the bed, where he flails and ends up lying entirely on top of Jonathan, whose fingers tangle in his hair, his other hand resting on Stiles’s neck as he holds Stiles’s face against his chest. Somewhere next to him, the papers flutter to the ground.

Well, this is awkward.

Against Jonathan’s chest, he mumbles, “I’m of age to consent to bonding with an adult without having to ask my parents. Parent. You want to let me up so I can sign the paper which we still haven’t decided is legally binding.”

“It will be,” Daniel says, and Stiles jerks in Jonathan’s grasp because he almost forgot other people were there. “Jonathan being your Sentinel, however temporary, makes it so.”

“Cool. Great.” Stiles tries to pick his head up, and this time Jonathan lets him, though when he opens his eyes and sees Jonathan very close, with Stiles pressed against a _lot_ of his body, he kind of wishes he hadn’t. “This is going to be a really awkward way to sign that paperwork.”

Jonathan stares at him a second, then sits up, dragging Stiles upright; Stiles twists so he doesn’t end up entirely on top of him again, and when they’re done with the awkward machinations Stiles is leaning against one side of him—the side away from the rest of them—with Jonathan’s arm around him. And his arm is throbbing.

Daniel pulls in a breath. “You feel like you’re in pain.”

Stiles leans over to grimace at him. “We’ve been here before. Almost exactly here.”

They stare at him for a moment, and then Daniel swears under his breath. “You were shot. I forgot.”

Jonathan goes absolutely rigid, which is not really what Stiles was aiming for. “You were shot?”

“It’s a thing. It happened. Can someone hand me the NDA paperwork so we can get on with whatever you’re trying not to say to me?”

General Carter leans over and picks up the NDA packet, handing it over to Stiles with a pen. Propping it up against his leg, he flips through and signs where he needs to, then hands it back. It travels back to Daniel, who sticks in his briefcase.

“So,” Stiles says, trying to ignore the feel of Jonathan’s hand against his hip. Stiles is a bisexual teenager. Jonathan is an attractive twenty-something-year-old man who’s cuddling him. This is a bad combination. “Want to explain what’s going on, now? Someone? Anyone?”

“The first thing you need to know,” Jonathan says, “is that I am a clone of him.” He gestures towards General O’Neill.

Stiles gives himself a second to take that in because, huh, clones, and then he nods. “Okay. Clones. I can deal with that. Is that where the ‘real!thing’ came from? Because that makes sense. Sort of. Were you cloned into a baby like twenty-five years ago, sort of lab grown, or did you have accelerated growth, or—”

“Teenager.” Jonathan looks over at General O’Neill. “I’m assuming that story’s not covered in the NDA.”

General O’Neill snorts. “Not if we can help it.”

“Huh.” Stiles shrugs. “I’m sure that’s not the whole secret, because something must have gotten you to be a clone in the first place. And this would be an awful lot of secrecy for just one person being a clone.” He looks at Jonathan. “Not that it’s not cool.”

Jonathan laughs. “Thanks. But no, you’re right. And also this is no longer my job.”

General Carter says, “We can brief him on what it’s necessary to brief him on after we debrief you.”

“Right. Sorry, Carter, I’m a bit off my game.” He leans down and sticks his head against Stiles’s neck for a moment, his nose pressed against him, and Stiles tries to hold still. “It was the NID.”

Everyone reacts to that, in varying degrees of stillness, and Stiles holds off from asking by the skin of his teeth. “The Trust?” General Carter asks.

Jonathan shakes his head. “If it was, there was no indication of it, though that doesn’t discount it. I don’t think they recognized me as your clone, but they recognized me as SGC personnel and knew where the subcutaneous transmitter. I need another one of those, by the way.”

“Technically you’re not SGC personnel,” General O’Neill says.

“But I am in your system, and the least redacted stuff has me on the SGC payroll.” He smirks at O’Neill. “Getting your job to pay your child support for you.”

Daniel laughs, and General Carter smiles a little. But then the smile falls. “Was there any indication of what they want the Guides for? Or you?”

“They didn’t say explicitly, but I heard them talking about waiting for maturation.”

General Carter swears rather vividly; General O’Neill looks entertained. Daniel, though, is the one to ask, “Any other indication?”

“I think I could smell it, but it’s been too long since I’ve been near a symbiote for me to so that with any confidence.”

“I’ll call Barrett, tell him they’ve grown another tumor.”

Jonathan makes a face. “That shrub is still with the NID?”

General Carter kind of smiles again. “He’s in charge of the NID now. Has been for over a year. Apparently they like to keep that appointment in-house.”

“Go figure.” Stiles’s arm gives a particularly unpleasant throb of pain, and he can’t help his wince; Jonathan’s grip tightens. “Okay, all of you out. If I think of anything else I’ll let you know.”

Stiles stiffens. “You can’t just kick Generals out.”

Jonathan laughs, though it sounds a bit tight. “I used to be him, I used to be in charge of her, and I—” He looks at Daniel for one of the first times. “I can kick them out.”

General Carter nods. “I have to head back to Colorado, but Jack and Daniel will be here for a while. And Cassie threatened so stop by.”

“Is that safe?”

Jack shakes his head. “When did that ever stop her?” He touches Daniel’s arm. “Let’s go.”

They all file out, and once they’re gone with the white noise generator whirring away, Stiles looks at Jonathan. “I am legal, I promise. I just didn’t think about telling you I was under eighteen because it’s not like we’re going to have sex.” Jonathan goes ramrod straight. “Kind of assuming we’re not having sex, seeing as this is temporary.”

“No, I’m not planning on having sex with you.” Jonathan rubs at his eyes with his free hand. “I’m sorry for dragging you into this.”

“Believe me, you didn’t drag me into this. I was shot at in the first attack. That’s how I met…other-you and Daniel.” Something occurs to him. “Is it weird, being near Daniel? Like, do you think of him as your Guide? Because he was your Guide, I guess. That must be weird.”

“You’re my Guide.”

“That’s a nice sentiment, but this is only going to be for, what, a few days?” Stiles twists to see Jonathan’s face, and he really looks like he doesn’t want to keep talking about it. “Never mind. So…how does this work? I probably should have asked you that before, but now that I know about the, uh, thing with you and the General, are you going to be involved in the investigation? How does that—” Stiles flails a little. “How does that work?”

“We can figure that out with Jack. Why are you here, anyway? They don’t usually drag kids into investigations, as far as I know.”

“I’m, uh…” Stiles sucks on his teeth, trying to figure out how to put this. “I’m strong. Really strong. I was actually with the Prime Pair being trained when your school was attacked, and they didn’t want to stop my training so they brought me with them.”

Jonathan’s eyes narrow. “How strong is strong?”

Stiles cringes, because he doesn’t want to talk about it. But he probably owes it to the guy who’s now stuck as his Sentinel. “Like ninety-five, probably. That’s the guess. Maybe higher. We don’t actually know how to test that high, but it doesn’t really matter.”

“So you’re a target, then,” Jonathan says tightly.

Stiles shrugs. “Yeah, probably.”

“You don’t seem too phased by that.” Jonathan moves Stiles so they’re facing each other entirely, which is kind of an awkward way to sit, but whatever. “In fact, you didn’t seem too phased to hear about cloning, either.”

“If you’d seen the shit I’d seen, you wouldn’t be that phased, either.”

“That shit being…?”

Stiles shakes his head. “I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

“For one thing, I don’t have a handy-dandy legally-enforceable NDA to have you sign. And for another thing, most of it isn’t my secret to tell. I could ask the, uh, person in charge if he’d be okay with me telling, but it’s not my place to make that decision.”

Jonathan looks at him for a long time, so long that Stiles shoves a hand through his hair just to be able to hide his face for a second. But then Jonathan sighs. “Okay. So, do you have any questions for me? Anything non-classified; I don’t know how much Jack is planning on telling you.”

Stiles considers it for a moment, discarding most of what he would ask because it’s almost definitely classified. Like ‘who cloned you’ or ‘who the hell decided it would be a good idea to make a clone of a forty-year-old into a teenager’. Finally, he settles on, “Captain America—Sentinel or Guide?”

“Sentinel,” Jonathan responds promptly. “His Sentinelness emerged when he was given the serum.”

“Nope.” Stiles shakes his head. “Common mistake. Captain America is 100% Guide for Bucky Barnes.”

“Cap has the protect-the-Tribe mentality for the entire United States, and the protect-the-Guide mentality for Bucky Barnes.” Jonathan grins at him. “And really, Captain America, a Guide?”

“Yes, Captain America is a Guide. One, have you ever heard of a half-blind half-deaf Sentinel?”

“All of that was fixed through the serum.”

“Yeah, through chemicals. Before emerging, most Sentinels just have average senses. I could see needing glasses, but not being as basically deaf as Steve Rogers was. And anyway, number two, Bucky Barnes was obviously the Sentinel.”

“In what way?”

“You mean other than the fact that he was a sniper? Why would Barnes be the sniper if Rogers was the Sentinel?”

Jonathan looks thoughtful, and Stiles has the thought that this is making things just a little more bearable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't worry, Blair and Jim aren't quite as negligent as they may seem at the moment. That will be addressed, I promise. 
> 
> Also, any questions that any non-Stargate fans have about the NID should be answered later, so don't worry.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a warning, there's a mostly-unseen panic attack near the end of the chapter.

Almost an hour after they find the building, they manage to get the Guide emotionally stable enough to be in danger of neither melting down nor hurting those around her, and John finally has a chance to catch up to the Prime Pair. He stays a couple feet away, as you’re supposed to do with Guides, and asks, “Have you heard anything about Jonathan O’Neill? He’s the Sentinel who we found.”

The Guide Prime shakes his head a bit distractedly, hand on the wrist of the Sentinel Prime, who looks deeply unhappy. “No, though I’d take that as a good thing. I had Stiles sent to the hospital in case they needed help, so if something had gone wrong they would have told me.”

For a moment, John can only stare at the Guide Prime, because what the fuck is wrong with him? Finally, he manages to get out, “You sent a seventeen-year-old to deal with someone in the middle of Danger-Keyed Counterzoning?”

The Guide Prime’s head snaps up, eyes sharpening on John’s face. “What do you mean, Danger-Keyed Counterzoning? O’Neill is a twenty-something PhD student with no military or law enforcement experience. How could he possibly be in the middle of DKC?”

John shoves a hand through his hair, trying to keep from reacting when one of the cops lets out a particularly sharp whistle nearby. “You didn’t know.” And now a likely-untrained seventeen-year-old has been with a fully-trained ex-special forces vet in the middle of DKC for at least an hour. The fact that the hospital didn’t call the Prime Pair implies that there was no feral incident, but it doesn’t actually guarantee it.

“He didn’t say anything. Why wouldn’t he say anything to the EMT, if he knew he was going to crash soon?”

To John’s surprise, the Sentinel Prime is the one who answers, saying, “DKC makes protecting yourself and your Tribe the main goal, and telling someone you’re in the middle of DKC exposes a weakness. He might have told a Guide, but a regular EMT…” He shrugs.

The Guide Prime sighs. “Shit.” He pulls out his phone and dials something, holding it up to his ear. Which is just for him; John is still hyped enough that he can hear the ringing as clearly as if the phone was against his own ear, and he has a guess the Sentinel Prime is the same.

It rings twice, and then a man’s voice—Jonathan O’Neill, distorted by the phone—says, “Yeah?”

The Guide Prime stiffens. “Who are you and why are you answering Stiles’s phone?”

“I’m his Sentinel.” It’s the voice O’Neill—General O’Neill—used when he saw John sitting in that goddamn chair in the Antarctic Outpost, all those years ago, and fuck if that isn’t disconcerting.

But more than that, holy shit, that means the clone of General O’Neill, who has more secrets in his head than most of the people in the world even if he’s been out of the program for over a decade, is bonded to a scary-strong touch-empath kid. That’s a problem.

More than a problem, that’s a goddamn disaster just waiting to happen.

The Guide Prime opens his mouth to say something, and then the Sentinel Prime reaches around him to pull the phone out of his grip and stick it up to his own ear. “This is the Sentinel Prime of North America. Put your Guide on the phone.”

“Yes, sir.” It sounds just insolent enough to sound like O’Neill, even as bizarre as it is.

There’s a pause, and then the kid says, “Hey Blair.”

“It’s Jim.”

“Ah.” The kid hesitates, but the Sentinel Prime doesn’t speak to fill the silence. “You heard, then.”

“Yes.” The Sentinel Prime glances at the Guide Prime but doesn’t say anything to him. Instead, he asks, “Was it consensual?”

Shit, John hadn’t even thought of that. The idea of forcing a Guide to bond is so repulsive that he wouldn’t have thought of it, and he’s basically an expert at thinking of terrible things that happen to people. But to take a Guide against his will, to force oneself into a Guide’s head and into his shields, that would be—

John would kill somebody would did that, civilian or no. Clone of his favorite General or no.

But the kid says, “Yeah, of course it was consensual. I am old enough to consent. And it’s a surface bond, so we can get rid of it in a few days. It was just the best option at the time.” He hesitates again. “Sorry.”

The Sentinel Prime nods to the Guide Prime, who, right, can’t actually hear both sides of the conversation. One of the many reasons he’s glad to not need a Guide. The second best thing the Stargate Program gave him, after Atlantis.

“Don’t apologize. Bonding isn’t something to apologize for, even if it’s a surface bond.”

“But I fucked stuff up, didn’t I? When we get rid of it I might infect everyone with sadness or something, right?” O’Neill says something too low for John to pick up, and the kid mutters, “I _know_.”

“We’ll come to check on you in half an hour.”

John winces at the idea of that even as O’Neill says into the phone, “That’s a bad idea.”

The Sentinel Prime clearly gets his hackles up at that, saying, “I’m the Sentinel Prime, and he’s under my protection.”

“And I’m a newly bonded five-sense Sentinel with military instincts and no territory. Which means all of my protectiveness is focused on my Guide. You come in here, it’s not going to go well.”

The Sentinel Prime considers that for a moment then says, “Okay. But you’re not going to keep him cloistered in that room, or in a bonding room.”

“Wasn’t planning on it.”

The kid apparently gets his phone back, because he asks, “Can the FBI Guide come, maybe? Or just Blair? I’m—I don’t know what I’m doing.” He sounds scared, and from maybe fifteen feet away Ronon reacts, which, Jesus, he’s stretching to be that protective of the kid who he only met once.

But it’s a bit like what O’Neill was talking about, that he has no territory and so he gets ridiculous about Guides. Not that there are many Guides on Atlantis, and they’re all bonded, and Ronon tends to not do that with bonded ones.

“I’m not sending Blair in alone,” the Sentinel Prime says, “but I’ll see if they can spare Spencer.”

“Thanks.”

\--

Spencer stops just outside the hospital room the newly bonded pair are apparently holed up in, taking a second before knocking. He spends very little time with newly bonded pairs, no matter that he knows the theory, and he knows that he isn’t the most qualified to reassure anybody, much less a newly bonded unprepared teenager.

What he does, know, though, is what it’s like to be a teenager thrust into a situation far out of his control, overqualified in every way except emotionally.

So he knocks, and after a second the Sentinel—or at least a man who isn’t Stiles—calls, “Come in.”

Spencer opens the door, slipping inside before closing it. The white noise generator is on, and he glances down at it, asking, “Would you like me to turn this off?”

The Sentinel—Jonathan O’Neill, of whom nearly every detail before his entrance to high school and most following that are classified—shakes his head. He’s sitting up in the hospital bed, one arm around Stiles, who’s sitting on the other side of him. A guardian position between his Guide and the rest of the world. Textbook. “No. I can hear past it, and I don’t want anyone listening in.”

Stiles gives him a startled look. “You can?”

“I wouldn’t have it on if I couldn’t.” Jonathan looks at Spencer. “I’m Jonathan O’Neill. You?”

“Dr. Spencer Reid with the FBI.” Jonathan tenses. “I’m here because Stiles asked for me, though I also need to take your statement.”

“It’s classified way above your pay grade.”

Spencer looks at him for a minute, because that right there is interesting. “Are you with the military, Mr. O’Neill?”

Jonathan gives him a droll look. “Classified, Dr. Reid. I assume the FBI teaches you what that means.”

Stiles pokes him in the side, and Jonathan glances over at him. “Can you stop screwing with the fed? Please?”

“Fine.” Jonathan looks at Spencer again. ‘What’s your PhD in?”

“I have ones in chemistry, engineering, and math.”

Jonathan coughs. “You went through that three times? I’m barely going to survive one.”

That had been one of the few unclassified things that Garcia had found about him. “War Studies.” He glances at the chair next to the bed, then asks, “May I sit?”

Jonathan doesn’t say anything for a moment, and Spencer just stands there because this has essentially become a bonded Sentinel’s territory, small as it is, and he’s not going to encroach on it without permission. Finally, Stiles pokes him again, then says, “Yeah, sit.”

“He—”

“Is a Guide, and not going to steal me away or whatever you’re afraid of. I mean, if anyone should be concerned about that, it should be me, considering that he’s almost as strong as I am, and actually competent.”

“I have little experience with actual guiding,” Spencer tells him, because he figures Stiles should be aware of Spencer’s qualifications or lack thereof.

“Yeah, but you—I assume—have been a Guide for longer than a few months. And you’re an adult.” Jonathan has been getting progressively tenser through Stiles’s speech, until Stiles sighs. “I’m not trying to foist you off on him or whatever. I’m just saying, stop with the ridiculous he-man act. And also, I’m a little offended that you need his word that it’s okay to sit down. This is my hospital room, too. Kind of. And this isn’t some Regency-era romance novel where I’m a woman who needs her husband to speak for her.”

Apparently Stiles doesn’t know much if any of the accepted knowledge about bonded Sentinels, or at he doesn’t care. Spencer isn’t sure which is more dangerous, but it’s interesting. He still doesn’t move, though, until Jonathan nods at him.

Stiles sighs again. “Can someone explain that to me? What just happened, I mean. Because I don’t get that. I mean, I know that there’s some level of hierarchy issues, where Sentinels are basically considered more important than Guides or more…who you listen to or whatever, but that seemed like a more specific thing.”

Spencer looks at Jonathan. “Would you care to explain or should I?”

“You.”

“In no situation is a Guide considered less important than a Sentinel. Rather, the traditional Sentinel mentality is that Guides are more important.”

“That’s bullshit.”

Jonathan shoots Stiles a look. “No, it’s not.”

“Yeah, it is. I’m not more important than you just because my proteins did a different weird thing than your proteins or whatever this is.”

Jonathan looks like he wants to continue arguing, which would be counterproductive, so Spencer cuts in, saying, “Regardless of whether you agree with it, it does explain the basis of what you were asking about. Much of what you just saw, as well as what you will encounter in general as a Guide, comes from the strong, apparently ingrained, sense of protectiveness that Sentinels tend to experience towards Guides.”

Stiles scowls at him. “But that’s the same kind of stuff that they used to say—that they still say—about women, about why women shouldn’t be allowed to serve in the military or whatever, that it’s just protecting them. But we’ve mostly gotten past that in regards to women, so why can’t we get past that with Guides? Because I don’t need anyone saying who can be near me or talking for me just to protect me. I’m an autonomous human being, if not technically an adult.”

“Primarily, we haven’t gotten past this because Sentinels can and do go feral if the Guides they are bonded to are put in danger, even just perceived danger.”

“And shouldn’t whether I’m comfortable weigh in as well?” Jonathan puts in.

Stiles looks at him, then sighs. “Yeah, obviously. But the problem is that the assumption is that you’ll be the one making all of the decisions. If someone asks something, they look to you. And I would almost be okay with that if it was just an age thing, but when the nurse came in and wanted to check my pulse she _asked you_.”

“Most Sentinels don’t like others touching the Guide they’re bonded to.”

Stiles throws up his hands, almost hitting Jonathan in the face. “I don’t care. It’s my body. I get to decide who touches it. Not you. And what if you had said yes but I had wanted to say no but didn’t get the chance to because _nobody fucking asked me_.” He’s shouting now, and Spencer can feel panic leaking out of him even past the bond.

Jonathan turns to face him, hand resting on Stiles’s cheek even as Stiles starts to move away. “You need to breathe. Your heart is too fast.”

“I fucking know that.” Stiles jerks all the way away from him, toppling off of the other side of the bed and catching himself on the floor with a hiss, and Jonathan lunges towards him and then stops; Spencer sees him shaking slightly. “I need to go not be here for a minute.” He stands a little shakily, walking over towards the door of the room.

Jonathan stumbles off of the bed after him, Spencer moving so he’s out of the way and there’s no chance of accidental contact. “Stiles—”

Stiles stops with his hand on the handle to the door, breath letting out in a long hiss. “I’m thirty seconds from a panic attack that I have no intention of having in front of you, so I’m going to walk out of here now.” And then he shoves out of the room, Jonathan following a few feet behind him. Spencer follows to, standing in the hallway to see Stiles walk and then lock himself in a bathroom, Jonathan standing outside of it.

Jonathan stands there, hands pressed against the door, for a second, and then he turns and stands with his back to it, blocking it from anyone who might come by.

Spencer gives him a second before walking over to him. “Are you okay?”

Jonathan glances at him. “My Guide is somewhere I can’t easily get to him, and I have to listen to him hyperventilate without being able to do anything about it.”

“Now may be a good time for you to give me a statement.” Distracting Jonathan seems like the best option at the moment, seeing as contact with his Guide was likely one of the only things keeping him from going feral.

“Six men attacked the Sentinel-Guide meetup at the university. Armed with AR-15s. They took me when I protected some of the Guides. They transported us to a warehouse where they removed the tracking device from my arm; I greyed out at that point and became conscious again in the abandoned house. They had put a Guide with me because they thought I was zoning. I extracted her and me from the house. During the escape I attempted to find the other Guides but was unable to. I killed two of the attackers during the escape. Then your people found us.”

That was a concise, if lacking, explanation of what had happened. “Why did you have a track device in your arm?”

Jonathan sends him what’s almost a smile. “Classified.”

“How did they know you had a tracking device?”

“Classified.”

“Were you specifically targeted?”

“Are we playing twenty questions, Doc?” Spencer just stares at him until he lets out a short laugh. “No, I wasn’t specifically targeted. They were happy enough to have me, but I was an accident.” For whatever reason, that makes him laugh.

Spencer looks at him for another minute, then says, “Okay. We’ll speak to your commanding officer to see how we can get access to some of this classified information.”

It’s a play, but Jonathan doesn’t go for it. “Don’t have a commanding officer, and good luck with that.” He turns towards the door, saying, “Stiles, Dr. Reid is here if you want to talk to him.” His voice is what could be mistaken for calm if Spencer couldn’t also see how badly his hands were shaking. He’s silent for a moment, then turns to Spencer. “He wants to ask talk to you.” Spencer has done a lot worse than talk to a panicked Guide in a hospital bathroom, so he nods. “You need to unlock the door. I won’t come in.”

After a second, the door opens, and Jonathan steps aside just enough for Spencer to step inside. It’s a small bathroom, clean and sterile-looking, lit only by the flashlight from Stiles’s phone, propped up against the base of the sink. Stiles himself is sitting next to it, knees up to his chest, head against his knees.

Spencer sits down on the lowered toilet seat. “Are you okay?”

“Fucking fantastic.” Stiles tenses, then relaxes deliberately. “Sorry. Uh, this might be really personal, but why didn’t you ever bond?”

“Because I never found somebody I wanted to bond to.”

Stiles glances up at him; Spencer can’t read his face in the shadows, and he’s not projecting enough for it to get past the bond. “Just that? What about the risk of mental illness?”

Spencer debates for a second whether or not to say anything, but it can’t hurt, and Stiles looks like he could use some comfort. “My mother is schizophrenic. My chances of also being schizophrenic are already relatively much higher than average, regardless of whether or not I bond. And bonding would not save me from that.”

Stiles stares at him for a second, then nods. “My mom had frontotemporal dementia. I—we thought I had it for a while, even though it turned out I don’t. I guess I—if my choice is being more likely to get that or someone else having autonomy over my body, how am I supposed to decide?”

“You still have autonomy over your body.”

He lets out a short laugh. “That’s a nice idea. Wrong, but a nice idea.” And then he puts his head back down against his knees, his shoulders high and shaking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I figure, given that he was previously possessed, Stiles would feel strongly about bodily autonomy.


	17. Chapter 17

Spencer watches Stiles for a moment, then asks, “Would you like us to get someone for you? Separating you from your Sentinel in any legal sense would be unlikely to be successful, but as a minor you have the right to request a chaperone be provided by the state. Or, alternatively, you can bring in somebody that you know and have them act as a chaperone during the temporary bonding.”

Stiles glances up at him, then looks at the door. “He can hear us, can’t he?”

“He has no say in whether or not you exercise your legal right. You are a minor in a temporary bond. By law, you can request either of those, regardless of what your bonded partner—in this case your Sentinel—may wish.”

Stiles clearly considers it for a moment, then shakes his head. “I don’t think that’s—there are classified things going on, and there are things I can’t talk about, and it’s complicated, and bring someone else into this mess. And if I’m a target, I don’t want to bring anyone else in to potentially get shot.” He leans his head back, baring his throat. It’s pale in the white light of the phone flashlight, his Adam’s apple in sharp relief. “Fuck my life. Why does stuff like this keep happening to me?”

“‘Stuff like this’?” Spencer had assumed that Jonathan was the interesting one in the bond, but from what Stiles has said—or, in some cases, not said—that may not be the case. Because classified does not always mean interesting, and unclassified does not mean unimportant.

Stiles glances at him, one eye squinting open. “I get involved in things because I make snap decisions, and then they fuck up my entire life and the life of everyone around me. And once again my body is no longer mine.” Spencer keeps watching him, because he’s found that sometimes staying silent is the best way to get answers when you don’t know the questions to ask, and finally Stiles says, “Look up Beacon Hills.” He closes his eyes. “Actually, don’t. That’s an FBI file nobody needs reopened.”

Spencer stays silent, but Stiles clearly has no plan to say anything else; he just sits there, head tipped back, fingers twitching against his leg.

There is no way that Spencer isn’t going to have Garcia pull up all of the information she can find about Beacon Hills, but Spencer is also going to have her look into Stiles specifically. He doesn’t know conclusively what she’ll find—he’s been surprised too many times on the job to count on anything—but he has a feeling.

Finally, Stiles sighs, dropping his head back down and opening his eyes. “I should probably go back out there. He’s probably getting twitchy.”

Spencer knows that Jonathan had been twitchy from the moment Stiles had stopped touching him, if not sooner, but saying so won’t do any good, so he just unfolds himself to his feet. “Would you like me to give you a minute?”

Stiles blinks at him once, twice, then shakes his head and stands, picking up his phone. The move blocks out most of the light, but Spencer can deal with the dark for a few seconds. Stiles reaches over and opens the door, standing just inside the room as light floods in, that sterile white light of hospitals and investment bank lobbies.

From what Spencer can see, Jonathan is still standing just outside of the room, close enough that Stiles would have to walk into him to get out. It’s not particularly polite of him, but it’s a very Sentinel move.

Stiles crosses his arms across his chest. “Are you seriously going to stand there?”

Jonathan doesn’t even blink. “Yes.”

“And if I tell you I don’t want you to touch me.”

There’s silence for a moment, and Spencer can feel muted panic leaking out of Jonathan. But, in a relatively steady voice, he says, “Then I won’t touch you. Though you’ll need to stay near me so I have at least one sense to ground on.”

Stiles stares at him for a moment, then nods, reaching out to grab Jonathan’s hand. Almost immediately, Jonathan seems to relax, though his eyes don’t look that half-hunted watchful look that Spencer has seen in the eyes of military and police in particularly violent jurisdictions. Ones who had been undercover too long, who had lost bits and pieces of themselves along the way and wasn’t sure where they themselves were anymore.

It’s a look Spencer shouldn’t be seeing in the eyes of a PhD student in his twenties or a seventeen-year-old high school student.

So when they move out of the way enough for him to exit the bathroom, he steps off to the side away from the room where the Sentinel is staying. “If you’ll be okay for a few minutes, I need to contact my team.”

Stiles gives him a distracted look, turning his head towards Spencer with his eyes still fixed on his Sentinel. Finally, he drags his eyes away enough to look at Spencer. “I’m fine. No matter what the past few minutes might have indicated, I actual am relatively stable most of the time.”

Spencer nods. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.” He heads all the way out of the hospital, because he’s fairly certain Jonathan can’t hear him this far out, especially as close as they are to a parking lot. Cars operate on a relatively similar frequency to human speech, and between those and the white noise generators in the hospital, it should block him out.

It’s nice to be outside as well, away from the crowds and the hospital smell. Spencer is used to it, but he’s not fond of it.

He dials Garcia’s number, and she picks up immediately, chirping, “Hit me with your genius, my dove.”

“Your dove?”

“My splendid, brilliant, pale dove. What can mama do for you today?”

Spencer fights a momentary smile. “Can you find me everything you can on Beacon Hills?”

“Can do.” He hears the faint sound of her typing. “What does this have to do with the case of the missing Guides?”

“Nothing, but the Sentinel we found just bonded with a Guide who mentioned it. And”—Spencer hesitates to ask this, because it’s not particularly any of his business, but if his suspicion is true, Blair needs to know so he can handle this better—“find what you can about Stiles Stilinski. Specifically, assault cases.”

There’s a moment of her typing, and then she says, “I’m finding a John Stilinski as the sheriff of Beacon Hills.”

“Wrong generation.”

“The only other Stilinski I can find related to Beacon Hills is his son, who has an unpronounceable name.”

That’s probably him, then, with Stiles being a nickname. That makes sense; Stiles could be a derivative of Stilinski. “Him.”

“It looks like Stilinski Jr. has one restraining order that a classmate took out against him, and he’s been involved in…wow, a number of murder investigations, starting with one where he apparently stumbled across half of a dead body buried outside the burned out house the dead girl’s brother was squatting in.”

“Any assaults? Him being assaulted, I mean.”

She hums for a second, typing. “Not that I can tell. But with both know that, with a sheriff as a father, he may not report something that happened to him.” It’s something that they see sometimes, children of police officers withholding information like that so they don’t need to worry about their parents being involved.

“Thank you, Garcia.”

“You want me to send you what I find about Beacon Hills?”

Spencer considers it, but murder investigations…that gives him enough of an answer about Stiltes’s watchful gaze as he needs at the moment. “No, that’s fine. Thanks, Garcia.”

“Of course, my angel.” She hangs up, and Spencer pockets his phone. But he doesn’t head back in, yet. He needs a moment.

\--

Stiles is fairly certain his Sentinel is just not going to let him go until they…unbond or whatever the fuck they do to make themselves no longer be Guide-and-Sentinel. He looks almost the way Isaac used to look when he stared at Allison, which is so unbelievably unnerving that Stiles can’t actually get himself to open his mouth and say something.

Because he has no intention of being Allison to his guy’s Isaac, even if he doesn’t think this is romantic with the Sentinel. But it’s need, and desperation, and he’s seen that look on too many faces.

But he’s not going to pull away because it’s not going to do any good, and because people have a tendency to chase when you run.

Jonathan sits down on the side of the bed, legs hanging off, and Stiles sits next to him. Jonathan is silent, silent so that the silence stretches like pulled sugar just this side of burned, near-acrid and bitter, and then Stiles blurts out, “I’m sorry about the—that. The thing that happened. With me freaking out.”

“Don’t apologize.”

But he’s in apologizing mood now, and he knows he fucked up, so he says, “I could feel that it hurt you, but I just couldn’t—I couldn’t breathe. But I’m sorry for hurting you. I know my job is to keep you from being hurt.”

Jonathan closes a hand over his mouth, briefly, warm and callused. “Stop apologizing. I can take care of myself. And it’s my job—my privilege—to take care of you.”

That sounds…icky, like Stiles is a child or more important than Jonathan. “Don’t—don’t call it that. Your privilege. That’s not—don’t. Please. I’m not—” He drops his head in his hand, and Jonathan lets go of his hand to put his palm on the back of Stiles’s neck. His head is throbbing at this point, like his heart is sitting in his skull, his eyesight pulsing, and even though he keeps sleeping he mostly wants to go back to sleep and wake up when all of this shit is done.

Jonathan’s hand slides up into his hair, and it feels really unbelievably good because he’s at that point of somewhere between numb and oversensitive where anything at all could feel either constraining or like heaven. Pulling his hand from his face, he shoves his sleeves up, because even they feel like they’re strangling him, and abruptly he just wants out or in or _something_.

He tends to be like this after panic attacks, or at least after bad ones like that, after ones that send him hiding shaking in a corner feeling like he wants to crawl out of his skin and then possibly die so he never needs to crawl back in.

“Breathe.”

Stiles’s teeth clench, so hard his jaw aches a little. “I am breathing.”

Jonathan is silent for a second, and then he offers, “Sorry. I—was a commanding officer in the Air Force. I wasn’t the top of the chain of command, but I was used to giving commands. Am used to it.”

Stiles holds on for another moment, then lets out his breath in one long exhale. His shoulders drop a little. “Yeah. I just—there’s a reason I have no plans to go into the military. Orders and I don’t go well together. Not for stuff that matters. Unless it comes from Scott, but that’s—” He shakes his head, feeling Jonathan’s fingers slide through his hair. He doesn’t pick his head up because he doesn’t want Jonathan’s hand gone. “When am I going to get that that classified information I’ve been hearing so much about? Or not hearing about as the case may be.”

“Couple hours, probably. Depends on when the hospital lets us out, because that isn’t a conversation that can be held in an unsecured location.”

Stiles laughs, but it comes out…wrong. “How is this my life?”

“What do you mean?”

“My life is such a shit show even without this. And I’m supposed to go back to school in a few days. I just—” He shakes his head again. “I’m a mess. It’s fine. I’m going to stop whining to you now.”

“You sound tired. You can go back to sleep if you need.”

Stiles snorts, finally picking his head back up. Jonathan’s hand slides back down to the back of his neck. “I think I’ve slept enough in the past 24 hours.” He looks at his watch. “Jesus, it’s still today. I really want it to not be today anymore.” But he can’t keep complaining because that’s not doing anyone any good, so he says, “Okay, now that we’re sitting here and I’ve apparently convinced the FBI guy I’m traumatized, let’s figure out how this is going to work.”

Jonathan looks at him. “What do you mean?”

“Well, for one thing, I have no idea how to be a bonded Guide. I barely know how to be an unbonded Guide. I’m also apparently a touch-empath, though I have no idea how that transfers to me when I’m bonded. But mostly, I don’t know how to help you.”

“You just need to be here. Near me.”

Stiles barely holds himself back from rolling his eyes. “That’s a lovely sentiment, but unbelievably unhelpful. Does that mean we need to remain in contact with each other for the next few days until we get this sorted out? Because frankly, between you and me, I don’t really like the idea of pissing holding hands with you. No offense. Or showering. I would like to shower sometime in the next 24 hours, and I’m assuming you do too, and I really don’t want us to shower together.”

Jonathan presses his lips together, apparently thinking. Or just stalling for time. Whichever. “We should be able to separate for short periods of time without trouble within the next couple of hours. Long enough to shower. In terms of the toilet, if necessary, we can separate for that long now.”

“It hurts you.” Stiles had been able to feel that, in a weird place in his head that he hadn’t known existed before. It’s uncomfortable, like his skull has grown to make room for another person but in the periphery, like a light in the corner of his eye that disappears when he tries to turn and look at it.

Jonathan makes an odd sort of noise, almost a laugh. “I can handle it.”

“It didn’t seem like that before.”

Jonathan is silent for a moment, then asks, “Do you know what the problem was?”

Stiles blinks at him. “That I wasn’t touching you anymore. Uh, physical contact is necessary for grounding, and without it your senses go out of whack and it hurts. More or less. I think.”

“Physical contact isn’t necessary for grounding.” Stiles almost jerks away from him out of surprise; Jonathan holds on harder, not quite hard enough to hurt. “It makes it easier because the shields have less far to go and it gives me a grounding point for my sense of touch. But I’m strong enough to ground on you without touch if necessary.”

Stiles is really confused now. “So what was the problem?”

“The problem,” Jonathan says, and he sounds almost angry, “is that you were in distress and there was nothing I could do to help. Distress reads to military Sentinels as danger, and not being able to reach your Guide when they’re in danger is nearly unbearable.”

“But it’s just a surface bond.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

Stiles opens his mouth to keep arguing, and then something unrelated occurs to him, and he says, “Someone said something about it being a family thing.”

Jonathan gives him a confused look, which is probably fair because that was probably a totally nonsensical question. “What?”

“You with the Air Force Generals and other-you’s Guide, there was some comment about it being a family thing, and I wasn’t really listening to all of it because…I wasn’t. But—but you said something about an occupational hazard because they were family. Or something. But then that was dropped. I get that sort of with the Guide, but what did you mean by that?”

To his amusement, Jonathan flushes pink. “Sam Carter is Jack O’Neill’s wife.”

“Oh.” That’s honestly not what Stiles thought he would say. “ _Oh_. Were you two—did you—before—”

The pink turns to pale, his jaw setting. “Carter and I didn’t do anything before I was created. I was her commanding officer—he was her commanding officer—and I would never have—”

“Sorry.” Stiles hadn’t really thought about the potential impropriety issues or whatever with that, though it makes sense. “I was just curious.” He looks down at his hands. “So, back to…guiding. Whatever the verb is. I guess it’s guiding. What else, _actually_ , do you need me to do?”

“If I need to use my senses for anything particularly strong—especially my eyesight—I may need you to talk me up and then down and give me something to ground on.”

“Why sight?”

“Sight is by far my least consistent sense; I’m more likely to grey-out than zone, and it’s generally my eyesight that goes. Hearing I’m most likely to zone on.”

Huh. Stiles hadn’t known that that was a thing, to have senses that one was more likely to zone or grey-out on, though it makes sense in hindsight. “So what do I do, then? If you start zoning or greying-out, then?”

“Contact will be necessary then. If I’m zoning on hearing you’ll need to engage another sense, either touch or smell, to a high enough degree for me break out of the zone. If I grey out on sight, I’ll need you to get me to a dark room and give me contact. For grey-outs I’ll be able to use the fact that you’re a Guide to break out of it.”

“That seems…not that hard.”

One side of Jonathan’s mouth quirks up. “I have better control than most, and more experience. Military Sentinels need to be able to work on limited guiding in stressful situations. It’ll be hard for you to get as lucky as working with me.”

“Arrogant, are you?”

“I like to think of it as confident.” There’s a knock on the door, and Jonathan calls, “Come in.” The door opens, and the fed walks back in, hands stuck in his pockets. “You have any other questions to ask?”

“The nurse says that, once you fill out the appropriate paperwork, you will be cleared to leave.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I plan to start writing a 7-story Harry Potter rewrite with Slytherin!Harry because I don't want to sleep, so my goal is to update each once per week. I'll try to establish a day to update each, though that'll depend on how the new semester ends up going. On the other hand, school is starting in just over a week, so I might drop off the map altogether. Hopefully not, but we will see.


	18. Chapter 18

There are way more forms to fill out than Stiles expected, especially considering that he wasn’t actually a patient, but he fills it all out and then agrees to check in with Blair—his Guide mentor, or something—every two hours so they can make sure Jonathan hasn’t locked him in a closet or whatever.

Then they head out to the parking lot, where General Carter is waiting near a rental car. Jonathan gives her a weird look when they reach her. “You playing chauffer today, Carter?”

She smiles. “We figured you’d appreciate dealing with as few people as possible, and you know I’m not a threat.”

Jonathan’s arm over Stiles’s shoulder—which is kind of awkward, in a 1980s quarterback being possessive over his cheerleader girlfriend way—tightens a little. “I’m assuming you’re not going to let me go back to my apartment”

Carter glances at Stiles, who tries to project innocuous and harmless. “With your new seventeen-year-old…friend?”

Jonathan rolls his eyes. “I’m not going to drag him into bed with me. You don’t need to make him sound like a prostitute I just hired off the street.”

“I don’t think my dad would be all too happy with that.”

Carter actually looks at him, instead of looking at Jonathan by way of him. “What?”

“My dad’s a sheriff. I don’t think he’d be too cool with me being a prostitute.” He has the sudden image of showing up dressed like a prostitute in front of his dad, and that thought actually almost makes this mess better. “And if you’re going to keep talking about me like I’m not here, I’m going to go not be here so I can call Blair Sandburg and tell him I’m not dead.”

Jonathan’s arm tightens again, almost to the point of pain. “No, you’re not.”

“I’m required to contact the Guide Prime every two hours—”

“I’m not letting go.”

Stiles wants to argue, because personal autonomy, but this also isn’t an argument he wants to have in front of an Air Force General who’s apparently his bonded Sentinel’s…sort of wife. Question mark. “Then stop talking about me like I’m not here. Being seventeen doesn’t make me deaf.”

Surprisingly, it’s General Carter who smiles and says, “Sorry. We’re going to brief you and finish debriefing…Jonathan. There’s a hotel room we have to do that in.”

“Is that secure?

General Carter glances at Jonathan. “It’s not like I can bring him to the Daedalus.”

“You named an aircraft carrier or whatever after a guy who made broken wings? I mean, he got wings in the end, but that seems a little…unfortunate.”

“You could bring him there.”

“I don’t think that was covered in the NDA.”

“I think you decide what’s covered in the NDA. Or Jack does.”

Her eyes flicker. “You—he hates being on them.”

“I just spent a couple hours in an unsecured hospital room with my new Guide. I’d really like to be somewhere military where one, I know nobody can get there, and two, nobody will bat an eye if I pull a weapon on someone who threatens him.”

Stiles wants to put his head in his hands, but that’s a bit inconvenient at the moment, so he just shoves his forehead against Jonathan’s shoulder, which is probably awkward but also surprisingly comfortable. It’s a hard shoulder, but not bony because Jonathan’s arms have a truly magnificent amount of muscle. Jonathan lets out an odd noise, so low that Stiles is probably the only one who hears it.

After a second, General Carter sighs. “I dragged McKay’s sister there; I guess I can bring your Guide.”

“And you’re a General, Carter. You could take over the ship and they wouldn’t bat an eye.”

She laughs a little, then walks over to them, holding out two little plastic things. Stiles reaches out, but Jonathan is faster, grabbing both of them. He hands one to Stiles. “Don’t let go.”

“What is this?”

“You’ll see.”

General Carter nods, then touches her ear. “Carter to Daedalus, beam-up for all beacons at my location.” She looks at Jonathan and Stiles. “Keep your eyes closed.”

Stiles squeezes his eyes shut, and a second later there’s a flash so bright he can see it in crimson through his eyelids. When the light fades, the ambient noise is different, and he opens his eyes to see…gray, mostly, and people in what he assumes are Air Force uniforms.

And he has no idea where the fuck he is.

Out of the corner of his eye he spots what looks like a window, and he spins in Jonathan’s arm to see—

“You’re kidding me.” Stiles turns back to look at General Carter, who’s looking at him a bit warily, even though he’s loath to look away from the sight beside him. “You picked the guy who made broken wings as the name for a _spaceship_?”

Jonathan laughs next to him, and General Carter cracks a smile. The man in the important chair stands, saluting General Carter. “General. Do you want the chair, ma’am?”

“At ease, Colonel, the chair’s all yours. This is Jonathan O’Neill and his Guide.” Who apparently doesn’t warrant a name, but Stiles doesn’t really feel like arguing that right now because they’re in space. _Space_.

“We’re in space.” The Colonel—presumably—looks at him, and he waves. “Hi. I’m the Guide. Also we’re in space. How are we—why aren’t we floating? Also how did we get here? Was that like Star Trek beaming?”

General Carter looks like she’s hiding a smile. “Why don’t I go brief you somewhere else. Thank you, Colonel.”

They head off the bridge—this must be the bridge, and they’re on a space ship, and that’s so fucking weird—and down crowded gray hallways, people moving out of the way for the General. Maybe that’s what it’s like to be Lydia in high school.

He kind of wants to tell Lydia about that now.

And he really should contact Scott, at the very least, and give him an update, because this just turned into a much bigger shit show than any of them were expecting, and he owes it to Scott to let him know. But today—Jesus, it’s still today—is really not the best time to give Scott bad news, even if it’s only temporary.

They finally end up in what looks like a small office-conference room hybrid, and Jonathan drags him over to the position as far from the door as they can get. He presses two chairs together so they’re basically touching, then leads Stiles into the chair. Stiles lets him, mostly because arguing is going to make things take longer, and he’s just not up for that right now.

General Carter is looking at them with something like amusement as Jonathan sits down and wraps an arm around his shoulders, so Stiles asks, “Is he always like this?”

“Jack wasn’t quite this bad when he first bonded with Daniel, but they were both adults at the time, and Jack had the backing of the Air Force. And the bonding wasn’t done as a stopgap measure for DKC. But after Daniel died the first time—”

Jonathan’s arm tightens. “Let’s not talk about that.”

Stiles would really rather that they do talk about it, because Daniel is definitely not dead, and also what the hell did she mean ‘the first time’, but he can tell—can feel—that it’s making Jonathan upset, and he doesn’t really want to push it.

General Carter sighs, closing the door and then sitting down across from them. “Now is as good a time as ever to brief you on what’s going on. As you noticed, we’re in space.”

Stiles coughs. “Yeah, I noticed.”

“This is the _Daedalus_. It’s one of a number of ships under the control of the U.S. Air Force that is capable of interstellar travel. They came as a result of what is known as the Stargate Program, which operates under the control of Stargate Command. The Stargate is a device that allows for near-instantaneous travel within the galaxy to any other Stargate.”

Stiles blinks at her for a second, because what the fuck, but also he’s best friends with a werewolf and was possessed by a demon for a while, so…okay. Aliens. Stiles can deal with aliens. Though actually, “Are there aliens? I’m assuming there are, because it would be really pointless to stick something like that on uninhabited planets.”

“There are aliens, though most of what you would think of as aliens were actually transplanted from Earth.”

“So like immigrants or like Europeans-raiding-Africa transplanted?”

“The latter.”

Lovely. “So…space slavery.”

“Former space slavery. We freed them—” She looks at Jonathan. “Almost ten years ago.”

Huh. “So, the NID? I’m assuming that’s not the Stargate Program, given that the letters don’t match and also context.”

“The NID is a secret civilian branch of the government that is used for the oversight of top-secret programs. They have a long history of having rogue actors within them, though they’ve been clean—”

“As far as you know.”

“—for years.”

Oh, this is all fantastic. Just what Stiles wants to be dealing with. Though he is good at secrets, and if he does end up having to interact with the NID, he should be able to hide the whole werewolf thing from them.

“Okay.” There are a million more things he wants to know, but also they’re in space, and he’s tired, and Allison is still dead and he’s still a Guide and he really wants to go home and _can’t_.

So he just nods. “Is there anything else I need to know, do you think?”

General Carter glances at Jonathan, then shakes her head. “If there’s anything else, Jonathan can brief you on it at the time.” She sounds like she has trouble saying his name, and he has the thought it must be weird for there to be another version of her husband. “Jonathan, I need the rest of your debrief so I can pass it along to Sheppard.”

Jonathan nods, and Stiles takes that opportunity to say, “It’s really cool that we’re in space, but I’m assuming there’s no way I can call Blair—the Guide Prime—from here. Because I need to call him.”

“Actually,” General Carter says, and smiles, “we do have a way to hook cell phones into our system so you can make calls. They’ll be monitored for security purposes, and you’ll want to keep it short, but you can make a call.”

“Okay. Where can I go get that set up?”

Jonathan’s arm tightens on him. “You’re not leaving.”

Stiles would drop his head down on the table if he thought Jonathan would let his body slump over that far. “Yes, I am. I’ll give you some hair or whatever it is you need to stay grounded for the ten minutes or whatever this’ll take, but I’m on a _spaceship_ with you. There’s nowhere for me to go. And there’s no reason for me to sit through a debrief I’m not going to understand or for you to sit through me telling Blair I’m not your hostage. And, hint, I need to not be your hostage to be able to convince Blair and Jim I’m not your hostage.”

“I don’t want—”

Stiles holds himself back from throwing his arms up in the air, but it’s a close thing. “I don’t care what you want. I don’t know you, not really. I don’t trust you. And it’s awesome that I’m on a spaceship, but I am trapped on a spaceship with your sort-of-wife in charge, which means that, if you don’t want me to leave, I’m probably not going to be able to leave. So if you don’t let me make this call, I’m going to start figuring out ways to get off of this ship.”

General Carter looks at him. “I would recommend against that.”

“And I would recommend against holding a seventeen-year-old hostage. If you’re going to tell me, honestly, that me spending ten minutes away from you is going to break you, I might consider it, but I’m serious right now.”

Jonathan stares at him for a moment, jaw working, then says, “These doors are airtight and relatively soundproofed, which means that I’m going to need something that smells like you.”

Stiles can do that, though he doesn’t let himself feel relieved yet. “Does scent-marking work?” Jonathan raises an eyebrow. “Rubbing against some of your skin so it smells like me. I don’t know what Sentinels usually call it.” It’s what Scott has started doing, even more so since Allison’s death; Stiles thinks it mostly a reminder that they’re all alive.

Jonathan nods. “That should work as a stopgap.”

“Great. Best option is that you, uh, rub my throat with your hand and I rub my wrist on your cheek—or your throat if the scent will be distracting if it’s so strong.” He shoots General Carter a sheepish look. “Sorry that this is taking longer than expected.”

“I’m married to a Sentinel and friends with his Guide.”

Right. He looks back at Jonathan, who says, “Cheek works.”

Stiles rubs his wrist a little to warm it up to let the scent out—he’s learned some things from being in a werewolf pack—then twists and awkwardly bends his arm to lift it up to Jonathan’s cheek. He rests it on Jonathan’s cheekbone, trying to miss the stubble as much as he can because wrists are sensitive and he really doesn’t want to start reacting to the sensation. Jonathan twists his head to nose at Stiles’s hand in an unnervingly werewolf move, and then he lifts a hand up to rest it on Stiles’s throat.

Like they just completed a circuit, heat flows through him, and his eyes close at the sensation. There’s something there, not like the Nemeton but like pressure on the back of his neck and a hand tipping his head back to bare his throat and protection and need, and then he jerks away because he can’t deal with this right now.

“Was that—” His voice is hoarse, and he clears his throat. “Was that enough?”

Jonathan is watching him, but he just nods. “For the moment.”

General Carter looks between them, then touches her earpiece and says, “Colonel, I need a civilian cell phone patched into the system to make a call. It should be the only number onboard that isn’t in the system.” She pauses for a moment, then nods and says, “Your phone should read that it has a signal within the next minute.”

Stiles pulls out his phone and glances at it, but it’s still reading as no service. “I’m not going to get, like, ridiculous roaming charges, am I?”

She shakes her head, looking amused. “No, you don’t need to worry about this. We’re hooking up directly to a military satellite, so your carrier won’t be involved in you making the call.”

Neat. Stiles stands, Jonathan’s arm sliding down to his wrist. “I’m going to go stand outside the door, if that’s okay.”

“You shouldn’t be in anyone’s way,” she tells him.

Stiles glances at Jonathan, who’s still watching him, then pulls away, and Jonathan flinches a little, his hand going up to his nose. Stiles ignores that, striding around the table to the door. It pulls open with a little bit of resistance, and then he steps out and closes it behind him.

And he’s out.

Slumping against the wall next to the door—as though being against the door will somehow let Jonathan see him—he drags his hand through his hair. He’s on a spaceship, which is fucking awesome, but this is still such a clusterfuck. And he needs _sleep_.

But that’s not an option at the moment, so instead he pulls out his phone and stares at it until the icon shifts to being in service.

Stiles pulls up Blair on his contacts and dials before sinking down against the wall to sit on the floor with his knees up in front of him. It rings twice, and then Blair picks up with a sharp, “Blair Sandburg.”

Stiles sighs. “Hey, Blair.”

“Stiles.” He sounds relieved. “How are you doing?”

“I’m…” He doesn’t really want to lie, not right now. “I’m okay. This isn’t ideal, but I’m dealing.” That sounds like a lie even to his ears.

Blair must hear it, too, because he asks, “Do you want Jim and me—or just me—to come over?”

That is so unbelievably far from being an option, it’s not even funny. But Stiles can’t really say that. “That’s not really—Jonathan’s a bit twitchy right now. I think the hospital didn’t agree with him.” That, at least, is true. “I’m fine. I’m planning to actually sleep for a couple full REM cycles soon. Am I going to have to share a bed with him?”

“It depends on the—”

“In your professional opinion. Please.”

“That would be ideal. Or, rather, the best option bonding-wise. Given that he’s coming out of DKC, he may still be too keyed up to sleep, but the two of you sleeping while in physical contact will give your minds a chance to sync up and stabilize the shields more.”

That actually sounds great. Maybe they’ll be able to separate a bit without Jonathan freaking out every time. “Do we have to…sleep together? In the euphemistic sense?”

“That isn’t necessary,” Blair tells him. “Only about thirty-five percent of bonds become sexual, and relatively few temporary bonds—ones that actually stay temporary—do. I’m not sure of the numbers on that, though I can look it up for you if you want.”

“No, that’s fine.”

“Almost forty percent of bonds—including temporary ones—are familial, which accounts to some degree for the remaining non-sexual bonds, but there are still a decent number of romantic or platonic non-familial non-sexual bonds.”

Stiles takes a second to take that in. “So I don’t need to have sex with him.”

It sounds kind of like someone—probably Jim—laughs in the background as Blair says, “No, you are under no obligation to have sex with him. In fact, I would suggest against it, unless you intend to make this a permanent bond.”

Stiles had thought the argument would be that Stiles isn’t eighteen while Jonathan is in his twenties, which is a fair argument, but that’s interesting. “Why?”

“Mostly because it tends to add a degree of emotional attachment that may make one or both of you more likely to fight breaking the bond. And it can also be difficult to tell in either direction how much of it is true desire and how much of it is forced intimacy due to the bond, which can make consent complicated.”

“Also,” Jim says into the phone, “you’re not legal, and if he has sex with you I’m going to go after him.”

“I think I’ll manage to restrain myself,” Stiles says. “Thanks. If I’m going to sleep soon, I’m not going to plan on the two hour check-in because that’s not conducive to sleep and I don’t have a concussion, so when do you want me to call you next?”

Blair is silent for a second, then says, “I want you to get some real sleep, so give me a call by ten tomorrow morning. If you’re still asleep, Jonathan can call us as long as he’s somewhere Jim can hear you sleeping.”

“That’s…slightly creepy. Okay. Ten a.m. it is. I’ll set an alarm.”

“Get some sleep, Stiles.”

“Thanks.” Stiles hangs up, then drops his phone in his lap to run his hand through his hair again. And then, after a minute, he drags himself upright, sticking his phone back in his pocket, and opens the door. General Carter and Jonathan are silent, so he walks in and says, “Blair says we need to sleep together.”

Jonathan chokes. “What?”

It takes Stiles a second, and then he realizes what he said. “In the non-euphemistic sense. Like sleep. Which is a thing I should do soon. I’m going to stop talking now.”

General Carter stands. “I have everything I need right now, so I’ll leave you two alone. An airman will be along in a couple minutes to show you where you can sleep if you intend to stay on the ship.”

Jonathan nods, still staring at Stiles. “We’re staying.”

General Carter nods then walks past Stiles out of the room, being careful not to touch him, leaving the two of them alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took longer than I intended, mostly because I had an unfinished chapter sitting on my computer for like a week and then I wrote something like 2k words of it today. *productivity*


	19. Chapter 19

The kid looks tired.

Jonathan keep a hand on his shoulder as they follow the airman towards where they’ll be sleeping, maintaining as little contact as he can without his eyesight flinching and burning. It’s always been his most erratic sense, and with as much as his senses has been fucked with in the past day or so, it’s currently non-functional basically as long as he’s not in contact with his Guide.

But he doesn’t want to put the kid more than he needs to, because he’s pretty clearly on the edge of a breaking point, and he’s just a kid.

The airman swipes them in then hands him the card, and Jonathan follows the kid into the room. It’s a spare officer’s room; they’re in Earth orbit and not planning to head out anytime soon, so the ship isn’t full to capacity. Which is a blessing at the moment, because the room is military-clean, if not Sentinel-clean.

The kid is looking at the bed, which is small, and then he sighs. “I’m assuming you want to be between me and the door.”

“Yes.”

“Right.” He shoves a hand through his hair, then glances back at Jonathan. “I’m just need to take off my shoes and figure out how small I can make myself, because all of my stuff is at the police station or…something. Wherever it is. Is there anything you need to do before we get at least a few hours of sleep?”

“I’m not going to sleep.”

The kid lets out a laugh that’s actually painful to hear, it’s so hoarse. “Blair said if we both sleep while touching, it’ll make the bond settle more. And frankly, I’m not okay with you staring at me while I sleep.”

Jonathan still has no intention of sleeping. “I won’t hurt you.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Stiles takes the few steps towards the bed, Jonathan following to maintain contact, and drops down, pulling off his shoes. “Fine.” He kicks his shoes under the bed. “I’m going to sleep. Sit there staring at the door waiting for someone to break in, see if I care. But don’t whine to me when I wake up screaming in a few hours that your hearing is still fucking with you or whatever is wrong because the bond still hasn’t stabilized. Oh yeah, and I’m probably going to wake up screaming. Good night.” And then he lays down, rolls over, and presses himself against the wall, his entire body one stiff line.

Jonathan stares down at him for a moment, flickering in his periphery and spots of color and gray across his vision, and then he sits down next to him. The bed are barely large enough for two adult men laying on their sides, which means that this is going to be a very tight squeeze, but he has no intention of laying down and sleeping. Not when he needs to protect his Guide.

The kid tenses even more when Jonathan’s hip brushes against him, and Jonathan settles a hand in his hear, leaning down to shush him. He’ll pretend he’s a grown-up Charlie, even though Charlie never lived to be this age and Jonathan’s body is all wrong.

He keeps his hand in the kid’s hair, stroking back and forth to try to calm him—without letting go—and watches the door.

\--

It’s snowing.

Stiles is in the courtyard and it’s snowing and the ground is stained red with Allison’s blood, dotted, dripping, sinking into the creases in Stiles’s hands, into his skin, and she’s bleeding out in Stiles’s arms.

She’s bleeding out in Scott’s arms.

Her skin is like snow and it’s streaked with blood and blood is running down the sword in Stiles’s hands, it’s gushing, filling all of the grooves and coating his hands, and when he strokes her hair back from her face it smears across her forehead.

And then she opens her eyes, and they’re red like the blood, red like her lips, red like his hands, and she’s alive and she’s bleeding out in his arms, and he tries to stop the blood but everywhere he touches bleeds more.

Stiles wakes with a scream bitten off in his throat, muscles taut and aching. There’s a hand in his hair, a thumb stroking back and forth, and someone sitting on the bed next to him.

“What time is it?”

The thumb keeps stroking through his hair, not missing a beat; Jonathan must have known he was awake as soon as it happened. “It’s been three hours.”

Of course it has. “I can go back to sleep, right?”

“Of course.” Stiles lays there, muscles still tight, not sure if he actually wants to go back to sleep if it means dreaming about Allison again, and after a moment Jonathan barks out a laugh. “You need to relax to do that.”

Stiles squeezes his eyes shut. “Says the guy who’s been sitting staring at a locked door for three hours.”

“Go to sleep.”

Stiles tries to laugh and doesn’t quite manage it. “You, too.” Jonathan doesn’t move, and Stiles curls up on himself a little bit tighter. He doesn’t want to be here. He doesn’t want to be in this situation. He just wants to sleep without dreams or—in the absence of that—cuddle in a puppy pile until his skin hurts a little bit less. Cheap vodka would be an okay substitute in a pinch.

Unfortunately, none of those are options.

The strokes get longer in his hair, the pressure heavier. “What can I do to help you sleep?”

Stiles presses his forehead against the cold wall next to him. He doesn’t really want to ask, but he also really wants to sleep. “Can you lay down next to me? Please?” Everything aches, and he’s so cold. Jonathan doesn’t move, except his fingers. “Please.”

Jonathan sighs, and then his hand moves away from Stiles altogether. Which, okay, that’s an answer, if not the one Stiles thought he would get. Sentinels are supposed to want contact with their Guides, and Jonathan had seemed to want that, but apparently this is too much.

Stiles’s shoulders hunch a little bit more, tension radiating out from the base of his skull like a bar across his back, and he’s not going to be able to sleep now, that’s for sure. Though if he lays here for long enough he might just pass out out of exhaustion.

And then a body settles against the length of his spine, and it’s so surprising he freezes. Jonathan sighs again. “Relax. I’m not going to do anything to you.”

Stiles forces himself to let some of the tension out of his shoulders. “I know.” He lets out a long breath. “Thank you.”

Jonathan lets out a breath, a hot point against the back of Stiles’s neck. “Go to sleep, Stiles. Whatever you’re afraid of can’t get you here.”

Stiles is already slipping back into sleep, now that there’s warmth and touch and no open air against his spine, but he manages to get out, “It already happened.” But that’s not quite true. “Scott’s not dead but Allison is, and Erica and Boyd and Laura Hale and I didn’t know her but she’s dead too. That one wasn’t my fault,” he says for the sake of honesty, and the words are slurring now, like half-wet oil paint smearing across a canvas. “I don’t think Erica or Boyd were, either. I don’t know. But Allison was.” He’s almost asleep now, but he repeats, “Allison was.”

And then sleep falls across his eyes like a warm cloth, and he’s gone.

Stiles jerks at the sound of knocking on metal, the movement slamming his head against the metal wall in front of him, and he recoils with a hiss of pain. The movement pushes him into a warm body in the process of sitting up, and he takes a second to bury his forehead against their shoulder because it _hurts_.

An arm wraps around him, briefly, and then Jonathan stands, walking over towards the door. Stiles flops over on to his back, peering at him. The door slides open, and just past it stands Military Sentinel Guy Who Isn’t Other!Jonathan. Sheppard. John. There are too many J names.

Sheppard tries to look past Jonathan at Stiles, and Jonathan takes a half-step to the side, blocking his view, barking, “What?”

“General Carter wants me to escort you to the FBI team. They got permission to talk to you.”

“And they decided a Sentinel was the best person to deal with me?”

Sheppard shrugs. “It was me or Ronon, and Ronon’s feeling protective of the kid. And not that it’s really any of my business, but the kid is a minor.”

Jonathan’s shoulders tighten. “I’m not having sex with my Guide.”

“You also not bruising him up?”

Jonathan whips around to stare at Stiles. Or, more precisely, Stiles’s forehead, which still hurts. “Fuck.”

Stiles pokes at his forehead, which, yep, is bruised. “Ow.” Scott is going to kill him. Or maybe Jonathan. Probably Jonathan. “Why do you have metal walls?” Or, better question, why are they still on a spaceship? “Also he isn’t having sex with me.” Stiles rolls vaguely upright, his head giving an unhappy lurch. Yep, that’s dehydration. Also he needs to pee. “Sorry, you can go back to your conversation now. FBI. Fun talks. I assume you need me there.”

“I do.” Jonathan looks at Sheppard. “Give us ten minutes.”

Sheppard nods. “I’ll tell General Carter.”

The door slides shut, and Jonathan turns back to look at Stiles. “I’m going to need you to stay in contact with me during this.”

Stiles blinks at him. “Good morning to you, too. What time is it, anyway? Also, you’re not in contact with me now, and you seem okay. Not that I can really tell. That’s not really my skill set.”

Jonathan nods, heading over to Stiles. “The bond has settled some, but we will be around three Sentinels with too many unguarded exits, and I’m a military Sentinel. Having a Guide, especially a Guide with no military training, at risk is…unnerving.” He reaches out and smooths a few fingers over Stiles’s forehead. “This is bruising.”

Stiles doesn’t move away because that’s not a fight worth having, not right now. “I have a mean swing with a baseball bat. And I know how to shoot a gun.”

Jonathan recoils. “I’m not giving you a gun.”

“I wasn’t asking you to. I was just saying.” Stiles shrugs, rubbing at his forehead. “What’s the likelihood we can stop at a pharmacy before we head to the station so I can go buy some concealer?”

“Why?”

Stiles blinks at him; he still really disconcertingly close. People don’t stand that close when talking, normally, or at least Americans don’t. “Because I don’t carry concealer with me, and even if I did, all of my stuff is back at the station.”

“Why do you need concealer?”

“Did you miss what’s about to be a giant dark spot in the middle of my forehead?”

“Concealer won’t hide that.”

Stiles rolls his eyes, stretching his shoulders because he’s sore as hell from sleeping the way he did. “It will for those of us who aren’t Sentinels. And concealer is awesome. Especially stuff made for stage. I’ll just go with the palest stuff that they have. If we have time.”

“I’ll make sure we have time. We can’t beam directly to the station, anyway; it’s too risky.” He reaches out and slides his hand across the back of Stiles’s neck and up into his hair. “Can you give me five minutes to imprint on you?”

“Does that require me being naked?”

Jonathan squints at him. “Why would you think that?”

Stiles’s face burns a little. “I’ve read a lot at Sentinel-Guide stories online. There’s usually a lot of…naked touching. I’m going to stop talking now.” His shoulder twinges, and he rolls it again. “We really need to figure out a better way to sleep if we’re going to do this again. And yeah, you can imprint on me. Now I’m actually going to stop talking.”

“Would you mind taking off your shirt?”

Okay, this is getting kind of weird. “You’re treating me really carefully now, and it’s actually kind of disconcerting.”

Jonathan rubs at his forehead. “I can’t tell if you want me to be less considerate. I watched you have a panic attack over the idea of losing your bodily autonomy, and you’ve chewed me out a number of times over the idea that I should ask instead of ordering, so what exactly are you looking for?”

Stiles shrugs. “Mostly I just didn’t expect you to actually change what you were doing.” He pulls off his shirt, dropping it down on the bed. “Imprint away.”

Jonathan stares at him for a moment with that look of frustration that Stiles is remarkably familiar with because he sees it on his dad’s face all the fucking time, or at least used to when Stiles was still lying about what was going on. And then he leans forward and buries his nose against Stiles’s throat. “You smell like tension and anxiety. You know that, right? All the time.”

Stiles tries to relax, which doesn’t work super well because there’s an attractive man sniffing his clavicle. “So I’ve heard.”

Jonathan snorts. “Working on it, are you?”

Stiles rolls his eyes, even though Jonathan can’t see it. “No, not really. Tension keeps me safe.”

Jonathan’s hands land on Stiles’s hips, sliding up to his ribs, and Stiles’s eyelids flutter shut because that feels really good and he has to concentrate on ignoring the fact that there’s a hot person touching him. “You seem particularly focused on your safety.”

Stiles shrugs his free shoulder. “Yeah, maybe.” Jonathan’s tongue touches his collarbone, and he shudders. “Okay, let’s both pretend that my body isn’t reacting to this. Please.”

“That would be easier if you didn’t bring it up.”

“Right.” Stiles manages to stay silent for a minute, then asks, “You’re not homophobic, are you? Because this is going to get really uncomfortable if you are.”

“My previous Guide, as it was, was a man. Is a man. And this isn’t sexual.”

“No, but I am a bisexual teenager who is currently very close to an attractive man who looks like he’s in his twenties.” Jonathan lets out an irritated breath, hand not hesitating as it slides down Stiles’s arm. “Look, I’m not saying this to make things awkward. Or, really, I’m saying it to make it awkward now so it doesn’t get awkward later in front of everyone else. Basically, I just need acknowledgement that you get that I’m probably going to react to you touching me, and that you’re not going to freak out on me.”

“I’m not going to freak out on you.” He sounds bored now, as though he doesn’t care now that he knows Stiles isn’t planning on jumping him or whatever. And then he leans back, tracing Stiles’s forehead like he’s fucking Harry Potter or something. “We should go.”

Stiles blinks at him. “Can I pee first?”

\--

Stiles smears the ridiculously pale foundation on his forehead, blending it out as best as he can with his fingers, really absurdly glad he’s had so much practice doing this so he doesn’t look like an abuse victim in school.

Jonathan peers at him, pupils dilating a little. “It’s still visible. And that doesn’t match your skin tone.”

Stiles wipes off the excess on his other wrist, trying to ignore the gross sliminess. “You’re a Sentinel. And they don’t sell foundation in ghost color.”

“You’re not ghost colored.” He reaches over and smooths a thumb over the edge of where the foundation ends. “How did you find Sentinel safe makeup?”

“Every makeup brand sold in the United States is Sentinel safe.” There’s nowhere to stick the foundation bottle, so he just leaves it in his lap. He’ll carry it in later. Stiles looks up at the front of the car where Colonel Sheppard is driving. “Isn’t Colonel kind of high to be doing on-the-ground investigations for a kidnapping case?”

Sheppard sounds like he’s smiling when he says, “I think they were just getting sick of me.”

“I’d’ve thought you’d be happy to get away from McKay,” Jonathan says.

Sheppard laughs. “I didn’t know asking to get away from him was an option. Though he has mellowed with…experience. You’d hardly recognize him now.”

“Well, at the very least he’d hardly recognize me.” Stiles gets a press of tension through the bond, though it doesn’t show on Jonathan’s face. And then Jonathan looks at Stiles, telling him, “Sheppard also knows about the Stargate Program.”

Sheppard’s eyes flick over to them in the rearview mirror. “And theoretically, I had tight enough shields to keep the Prime Pair out of my head.”

Stiles shrugs. “Sorry about that. Although your shields—are they stronger because you don’t have a Guide? So it’s all contained in your head, and there are fewer places for it to leak through. Like if you think of it like heat transfer, all of the heat is in you and it’s not going anywhere, so you have less loss than if you were sharing it back and forth with someone else.”

“That’s one theory,” Sheppard says in a tone that makes it clear he doesn’t want to talk about it.

But Stiles has never been good at not pushing just because somebody doesn’t walk to talk about something. “But you think it’s the wrong one. Yes? Maybe? I mean, obviously you’re a strong Sentinel, touching you feels like candy—don’t look at me like that, I’m not going to go draping myself all over him, it was an accident—who’s functional without a Guide, which is kind of awesome, I have to say, so obviously you’re self-sustained. Although I am just kind of pulling this theory of my…head.”

“There’s been little research done on the topic, and the good thing about being a Colonel is that I don’t need to play light switch anymore.” He pulls into the parking lot of the police station, parking like it’s what he was born to do. “We’re here.”


	20. Chapter 20

Aaron has officially decided he hates this case.

The suspects—and most of the victims—disappeared literally without a trace, half of what they need to know is classified, and Sentinels and Guides make his job a nightmare. Reid is fine—Reid is stable, he knows Reid, he likes Reid—but there are so many places they need to step carefully and so many things that could go wrong.

Like with the teenage Guide who just returned to the station bonded to one of their victims, who was just surrounded by the Air Force contractor, the Colonel, and the Prime Pair.

He wants to see what exactly is going to happen between them, first, to get a feel for the victim before he interviews him. There’s no indication he worked for military—with his age and schooling, virtually no way he should have been able to unless he was working for them through his education—but the majority of his information is classified. That alone means Aaron will have to step lightly.

As Aaron watches, the contractor—Ronon, with no given surname—reaches out towards the Guide’s forehead, baring his teeth when O’Neill bats his hand away. “Your Guide is bruised.” He says the word Guide the way he’s been saying it all day, like it’s not one he’s familiar with but is instead one he learned through brute memorization. “I’d have thought you knew to take better care of him.”

“Believe me,” O’Neill drawls, voice tight, “it won’t happen again.” He turns towards the Prime Pair. “Though you really should answer for sending an untrained teenager alone to deal with a Sentinel coming down from DKC. For all you knew, he could have been forcibly bonded, and it wouldn’t be as shallow as this one.”

“I wouldn’t have made that decision,” Sandburg snaps, and Aaron isn’t surprised, having seen his temper get increasingly bad as he worked through the night, “if you had disclosed the fact that you were in DKC.” He looks at the Guide. “Stiles, are you okay?”

O’Neill bares his teeth. “He’s fine.”

“He wasn’t asking you,” Ellison says, and Aaron steps in then, before it came come to a shouting match in the middle of the bullpen.

He doesn’t offer his hand to O’Neill because that can be tricky with newly bonded Sentinels, but he makes sure to focus on him when he says, “Mr. O’Neill, thank you for coming. This won’t take long, but I do need a report from you.” He gestures towards the door to the interview room. “Will you need your Guide with you for this?” Aaron has a vague hope that O’Neill will say no but isn’t at all surprised when he nods. “Okay, then. Both of you follow me, please. My name is Special Agent Aaron Hotchner and I’m in charge of the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI.”

“Feds,” O’Neill says, but follows along, “my favorite.”

Colonel Sheppard is following too, Aaron sees, and when he looks at him he says, “I need to be there to make sure nobody says anything classified. General’s orders.”

“Are you a lawyer, then?”

Sheppard laughs. “Just a pilot. But I’m familiar with what’s in the classified files. Ronon is, too, but he’d just as soon nobody say anything, so they figured I’d be best for the job.” He gives a beaming smile, almost genuine but not quite reaching his eyes correctly. It’s a good facsimile, though.

They step into the interview room, Derek following behind, and Aaron is putting down his notes when he hears a snarl and then O’Neill snapping, “You won’t have guns in this room with my Guide.”

Aaron looks up to see him standing between Derek and his Guide, teeth bared, hands flexed out but at his sides. Keeping his voice deliberately mild, Aaron asks, “What’s the problem here?”

“I will not have my Guide in the same room as two people I don’t know with guns and only one exit. I want them gone, or we can do this interview somewhere else.”

“I assure you, you’re safe here. Both you and your Guide.”

O’Neill glances at him, then _moves_ , and before Aaron can react he has Derek’s gun from his secured holster and is offering it back to him; Derek stiffens, then takes it back. “I want them gone.”

Aaron isn’t willing to give up his gun just yet. “But you trust Colonel Sheppard to keep his?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

O’Neill’s lips draw back, and then he takes in a deliberate breath, lets it out, and says in a voice that could almost be mistaken as calm, “You’d be best off thinking of me as a military Sentinel. My number one priority is the safety of my Guide. That means I won’t tolerate any threats from him, and right now, you and your guns are threats. And if you don’t know anything about military Sentinels, think of it this way: consider how far you’d be willing to go to protect your child, your partner, your wife. And then combine all of those together and turn them into one person with no training in how to protect themselves. Would you let two people you don’t know have guns around them in a room you can’t guarantee you can get them out of?”

Aaron is about to answer when, absurdly, the Guide says, “I know how to shoot a gun.”

“I’m not letting you touch a gun.”

“My point is that I can take care of myself. And I’m not too fond of the FBI, but I can guarantee you they’re not going to shoot me without a lot of provocation.” He touches the small of O’Neill’s back. “Seriously, can we just get this done with? You can have a pissing match later if you want, as long as I’m not stuck in a room with you while you do it.”

“This is something I won’t compromise on.”

“Can I just promise to hide behind you if they start shooting at us?”

O’Neill still doesn’t take his eyes off of Derek. “Bullet can go through someone.”

“Fine, so I’ll hide behind you and the Colonel. Can we get on with this? Please?”

O’Neill is almost preternaturally still for a moment, and then he says, “Sheppard.”

“I’ll keep him safe,” Colonel Sheppard says evenly. “I think General Carter would have my head if I didn’t.”

“Fair enough.” O’Neill steps to the side, pulling back a chair and gesturing for his Guide. The Guide rolls his eyes but sits, and then O’Neill gestures for Derek to walk around the table before he sits himself.

Once they’re all seated other than Colonel Sheppard, who’s leaning in the corner, Aaron says, “We’ve gotten your preliminary report, so this is primarily follow-up. Do you have any enemies or any reason why you specifically would have been targeted?”

O’Neill’s eyes flick towards, oddly, his Guide, who primarily looks bored with everything that’s going on. And then he smiles. “Yes.”

“And that is…?” Derek prompts.

“Classified.” He grins. “The Air Force is looking in to it.”

Aaron fights to keep his expression bland, and wins. “Do you _think_ they targeted you?”

“No. They were happy enough to have me once they got me, but they only took me because I got in the way. Bu they were familiar enough to know where the subcutaneous transmitter was in my arm.”

That’s interesting. “What was the transmitter for?”

“The Air Force didn’t want to misplace me.” He seems to think of something, because he reaches over and taps his Guide’s upper arm. “You’ll have to contact the Air Force for a list of people who could have that knowledge. I don’t have that information.”

Aaron files that away to ask the Colonel about later, then asks, “How were you able to escape?”

“I’m just that good.”

“And your Danger-Keyed Counterzoning? Looking at your history, you’ve never been in the military, so how did you learn that?” Though he had said, think of me as a military Sentinel.

O’Neill smirks at him. “Classified.”

Derek’s temper snaps next to him. “We have half a dozen Guides missing, and you’re going to sit there smirking at us? Don’t you care what happens to them?”

“Do you know what the word classified means?” O’Neill leans forward, though Aaron sees one hand still sitting on his Guide’s leg, under the table. “I do not have clearance to tell you what you’re asking, no matter how many times you ask.” He glances over at Sheppard. “Unless that’s changed.”

“I’m authorized to tell you he learned DKC through his experience with the Air Force. I can’t tell you when or why.”

O’Neill gestures towards him. “There you go. There’s not that much I can tell you that isn’t classified or that I haven’t already told you.”

Derek looks like he wants to protest, so Aaron puts a hand down on the table, signaling for him to hold off. “Would you be able to identify your attackers by scent? What we can access said that you are a five-sense Sentinel.”

“I would, but I’m not going to be able to track them. You put me in front of them, I’ll be able to point to them, though.”

JJ opens the door, and O’Neill _moves_ , standing and pivoting so he’s between JJ and his Sentinel; Aaron and Derek are on their feet almost as fast, because if O’Neill really is a military Sentinel he could hurt JJ without stopping to ask questions.

“Out.”

JJ stills, spreading her hands a little so they’re away from her gun. Good move on her part, though it may not be enough. Derek starts to move around the table, trying to get between them. “I just need to talk to Agent Hotchner. I won’t touch your Guide.”

“You have a gun, and you’re blocking the only exit. Get out.”

JJ hesitates, glancing at Aaron. “Hotch—”

“Out.”

She puts her hands, which Aaron immediately knows is a mistake, because O’Neill lunges towards her, and Derek lunges towards him, and Aaron braces to move—

And then there’s a caw, and exhaustion hits Aaron, hard and heavy and unnatural like a drug sliding through his veins, and he braces himself against the table to keep from pitching over to the ground, breathing hard to try to stay awake. Black spots his vision, and he hears himself gasp as though from far away, and one of his knees goes out from under him.

Something like wings brushes Aaron’s cheekbone, and then he hears the Guide say, “I’m so sorry.”

\--

Stiles doesn’t know what to do.

He would like to say he doesn’t know what’s going on, but that would be a lie. He knows exactly what’s going on, because he wanted them to all calm the fuck down and now everyone in the room, Jonathan included, is halfway to unconsciousness; Jonathan is sagging in Stiles’s arms as he braces himself against the table, Jonathan’s hand squeezing arhythmically against Stiles’s wrist. The problem is that he doesn’t know how to fix them.

So, raising his voice a little even though it’s probably unnecessary, he says, “Jim, I need Blair in here now.”

There’s a moment, a pause, in which Stiles resists the urge to look around because he doesn’t want to see the three feds and the Air Force Colonel in various stages of less-awake-than-they-should-be, and Jonathan squeezes Stiles’s wrist so hard he can feel his bones grinding together. And then Blair sticks his head in, Jim visible just behind him.

Stiles watches Blair look at him, look at the room, take everything in, visibly internalize it, and then look at him again. “What’s going on?”

Stiles flaps his free arm, which stops being free when Jonathan grabs it and pins it against his chest. Which, okay, whatever. Stiles is freaking out enough already; that’s not going to make it any worse. “I broke them.” Jonathan mumbles something, too slurred to understand, and Stiles flinches. “I don’t—I just wanted them to calm down, and but now they’re all mostly unconscious, and I don’t know how to fix them, and maybe you shouldn’t come in here because it’ll do this to you, too, and I don’t know how far the bubble extends.” Stiles buries his face against the back of Jonathan’s neck because he’s hyperventilating a little now and he doesn’t want Blair to see and Jonathan smells good.

“Okay.” Blair sounds reassuringly calm. “Jim, I need you to get Spencer and then keep everyone out; we’re strong enough to block him out, but he’ll drop almost anyone else.”

“Can’t your shields keep him out?”

“I wouldn’t count on it. There’s a lot of power and a lot of panic behind him.”

“I’ll get him.”

Stiles looks up to see Blair step in to the room, making shushing noises when Jonathan tries to snarl at him. “Shh, Sentinel, I’m not a threat to your Guide. He’s safe with me.” Jonathan tries to stay stiff for another moment, half-succeeding, then slumps back against Stiles so heavily Stiles almost falls over. “Are you okay, Stiles?”

Stiles coughs out a laugh. “Not really. Are _they_ okay?”

Blair leans forward to touch two fingers to Jonathan’s throat, looking at his watch and counting silently. “He’s fine. It’s a bit low, but as long as we fix this soon, we’ll be fine. Can you tell me what happened?”

“He was so angry, and so possessive, and I just wanted them to stop before someone got arrested for assault.” He takes in a shuddering breath, then lets it out slowly. It doesn’t help all that much. “And the bird’s back. Can you just—fix this?”

Agent Reid steps up behind Blair, then lets out a breath. “That’s stronger than I thought it would be.” He crouches down next to the blond agent, asking her something quietly. Stiles can’t hear her response.

Blair shakes his head. “I can’t just fix it, unfortunately. I’m not strong enough compared to you to override you completely, and this would not be a useful fight to have.”

Stiles swallows. “So what do we do?”

“The first thing is to get you calm.”

“I am calm. Isn’t that the problem?”

“No, they’re calm. You are not.” He takes a few steps towards Stiles. “The best way to deal with this is going to be for me to touch you. Are you going to be okay with that?”

Stiles swallows and thinks about it for a second, but it doesn’t make panic skitter down the back of his neck, so he says, “Yeah, I think so. But I don’t know if he will.” Jonathan is still squeezing bruisingly hard on his wrist, but his breathing is heavier, and Stiles can feel muffled panic coming down the bond. He wants to send calm back, but he has a feeling that would be a back fucking idea.

“He knows I’m not a threat to you. I’m projecting Guide as hard as I can.” He stops in front of Stiles, with Jonathan between them, and reaches his hands out towards Stiles’s head. Stiles flinches, then stills. “You seem not to know I’m not a threat to you.”

Stiles resists the urge to close his eyes; Blair is too close to do so. “Maybe you should help them, first.” He sounds panicked now, which he doesn’t want. “They need more help than me.”

“Spencer is helping them.” Blair’s fingers are a few inches from Stiles’s temples. “This’ll be a lot easier if I can touch you. “This would be easiest if we could have an hour for you to meditate, but I don’t think we do. So the best option here is for me to calm you down and us to go from there.”

Okay, that’s really not making Stiles feel better about it. “I don’t want you in my head.” He apparently sounds panicked enough that Jonathan actually straightens out a little, then almost immediately starts to drop. “Okay, Jonathan, I’m going to fix this, and I’m really sorry about this, but if you keep almost falling over, I’m going to fall over, and this isn’t going to go well.”

Jonathan holds himself as stiff as he can for a minute, then relaxes.

Stiles looks at Blair. “Yeah, you can do it, as long as it’ll fix whatever I did.”

Blair’s thumbs land on his temples, pressing a little, and Stiles expects to feel whatever magic Guide powers Blair has calming him down, but instead his thumbs start moving, massaging a little. Stiles tenses, and Blair laughs shortly. “This also isn’t going to work if you don’t want to calm down.”

“I thought you were going to use whatever magic on me to calm me down.”

“If I thought I could get through your shields, I might try.”

“What about both of you?”

Blair frowns at him. “I was under the impression you didn’t want me to use my powers on you?”

Stiles doesn’t, but, “I want more for this to stop happening before it suppresses their respiratory system or puts them in a coma or something.”

Blair glances behind him at—presumably—Agent Reid, though Stiles can’t see him between Jonathan and Blair. “Blair, you up for trying it?”

Stiles hears Agent Reid move, and then he’s next to Blair, peering at Stiles. “I need your consent to go in your head.”

Stiles sighs. “Yeah, you have it. Just…try to do whatever you’re going to do fast enough for me to not freak out about it. I’d really like to not have anything else to have nightmares about.”

Agent Reid reaches over to press his hand to Stiles’s cheek, and there are a lot of people Stiles doesn’t really know pressing against him and he doesn’t like it, he doesn’t like it—

And then a haze sweeps across his vision and all of his joints go loose and he thinks he’s toppling over but then he’s gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part of my hair is now turquoise.
> 
> Also, if any of you read my Harry Potter fic, I won't be updating that this week because I need to get my library e-copy again to finish the chapter.


	21. Chapter 21

Blair catches Stiles as he pitches over forward, bracing him and the Sentinel so he can maneuver the two of them into a nearby chair. The Sentinel is already starting to stir, though Stiles is in the closest they could get him to unconsciousness without actually putting him out. The shields in his head were strong, overlaid by the remnants of some other force Blair had never seen before. It he didn’t know any better, he would have said that a Guide ever stronger than Stiles had put those shields there and then died, leaving traces behind. But if there had been a Guide that strong in the United States, he would have known it.

“What the hell was that?”

Blair turns to look at Agent Morgan, who’s struggling to his feet; Spencer is bracing Agent Jareau to help her stand. “Stiles lost control of his powers and tried to calm you all down.”

Across the table, Agent Hotchner says, “He assaulted three Federal agents and an Air Force Colonel.”

He should have known that would come up. “Accidental emotional manipulation by an untrained Guide is not a crime for the same reason you don’t prosecute a toddler who gets ahold of a gun.”

“There’s no way he’s untrained,” Agent Morgan says.

“Stiles started his training a few days ago.”

“Then why is he out with everyone else?”

Blair’s temper spikes, and he rides through it because forcing anger down isn’t good for anybody. And because he wants a bite in his voice when he says, “Because I don’t have the right to hold a seventeen-year-old hostage.”

There’s a loud _caw_ , and Blair notices for the first time the animal—the astonishingly corporeal animal—sitting on Stiles’s shoulder. Nobody else noticed it either, apparently, because Agent Morgan and Agent Hotchner both recoil and Agent Morgan asks, “What’s with the bird?”

“It’s his animal, manifesting so we can all see.” He knows he sounds reverent, but it truly is a sight to see, like a piece of Stiles’s soul bared for them all to see. Blair has a feeling in this case it is a protector, as his Sentinel is not at full strength and he is incapacitated. “Most aren’t strong enough to do that, even after years of practice and meditation.” He reaches out towards the bird, and it snaps at him. As it rightly should, he notes to himself wryly. He has no right to touch it without Stiles’s permission. “Sorry.”

Agent Hotchner looks at Agent Jareau. “What did you need?”

“The Guide who was rescued is awake and ready to talk.”

Agent Hotchner nods. “You and Reid go and talk to her. We need to know how the kidnappers got out of the house.”

Agent Jareau nods. “We’ll head to the hospital now.”

Colonel Sheppard leans forward out of his corner. “I’ll go with you.”

Agent Jareau looks at Agent Hotchner, who nods. “Go, see what you can find out. We need to know where they’re going and how they’re moving around.”

Agent Jareau nods. “Yes, sir.”

She and Colonel Sheppard head out of the room, and Blair turns his attention back to Stiles and his Sentinel. The Sentinel is conscious now, eyes half-open, pressed back against Stiles; his eyes flick to Blair. “What did you do to him?”

“We calmed him down. With his permission. Evidentially whatever he was getting through the bond with you was enough to send him into a panic attack.”

The Sentinel inclines his head, taking the critique. “I’ll lock it down better.”

“What’s more necessary,” Blair tells him, “is for you to actually stay calm, or at least calmer. He can push through the bond if he notices you holding back, and he may do so accidentally.”

The Sentinel nods again. “Who was hit?”

“Everyone in the room,” Agent Hotchner says.

“He’s that strong, or was he just that panicked?”

“Likely both,” Blair answers, “but primarily the first. Did Stiles not tell you how strong he is?”

Jim, who just stepped up to the doorway, says, “Anything he was told while coming down from DKC probably didn’t process. O’Neill, you okay with me coming in?”

The Sentinel—O’Neill—looks up at Jim, then nods. “As long as you stay behind your Guide.”

Jim steps up behind Blair, setting a hand on his back. “It’s your room. How’s your Guide doing?”

“The link is muted.” He stiffens, then looks at Agent Hotchner. “You’re trying to figure out how they got out.”

Agent Hotchner nods. “Do you know anything about that?”

He grabs a phone from his pocket, dialing something on it and sticking it up to his ear, adjusting so he can wrap an arm around Stiles while holding the phone. “Jack? I’m not sure if Carter gets service where she is, but I know you can get in touch with her. The kidnappers—to get somewhere else, they’d have to go up. I don’t know if they stayed up, but that’s how you can find them.” He’s silent for a moment, then says, “I’m good. And can you tell Cassie the bond’s probably only until I’m stable, and she doesn’t need to meet him?” Another moment, and then he hangs up, sticking his phone back in his pocket.

“What was that about?”

Jonathan shakes his head. “Classified. If it pans out, we’ll let you know. Well, they will.” He shoves a hand through his hair.

“We need to know—”

Jonathan bares his teeth. “You are welcome to contact Jack O’Neill or Samantha Carter and tell them you need to know, but they would need to authorize it, not me.” He looks at Blair. “How long will he take to wake up?”

“I can hear you, you know.” Blair starts at Stiles’s slurred words. “You feel like an anti-psychotic.” He shakes his head a little, like a dog shaking off water. “That’s not a feeling I wanted back.”

Jonathan twists to cradle him. “Are you okay?”

Stiles blinks slowly at Jonathan. “You’re a really angry person. Did you know that? There’s all of this anger everywhere, and now it’s all in my head, too.” He reaches up and clumsily pets the bird rest on his head. “Shh, birdie. The adults are talking.”

Blair tries to hide his smile, and finally ends up cupping his hand over his mouth. “Stiles? How are you feeling?”

“’m never letting you in my head again because you feel like drugs and I don’t like drugs other than Adderall.” He looks at his hands. “I probably should actually take my Adderall. That might make me a more functional human being.” He lurches to his feet, Jonathan holding on to him. “I’m going to go find my Adderall. You might want to let go. My backpack is somewhere thataway.” He flails his arm in the direction of the bullpen. “I think. My forehead hurts.”

He starts walking, and Jonathan wraps an arm around his waist, stopping him. It visibly takes Stiles a moment to realize he isn’t moving anywhere. “I need to go get my backpack.”

“There are too many guns in there.”

Stiles throws up his hands, or tries, and the bird squawks and flies off of Stiles’s head only to land on his shoulder. Stiles doesn’t seem to notice, but Jonathan’s eyes dart to it. “We’re in a police station. There are guns everywhere. Why are you so worried about—oh.” He looks over at Jonathan. “Oh. I’m sorry.” He reaches out to touch Jonathan’s cheek. “I’m not Charlie, though.”

Jonathan flinches. “It’s too overriding an instinct.”

“Look, I’m going to have to walk through there at some point, and you’re not going to be able to evacuate the entire police station for me to do that. And you were fine with me walking through it earlier.” Stiles seems to be mostly awake now, though his pupils look a bit sluggish, and the bird is playing with his hair like he’s grooming it. It’s breathtaking how corporeal it is, though nobody other than Jim seems to be grasping the enormity of it. “I—you have a lot of things in your head. A lot of not-fun things. I have a lot of not-fun things in my head, too.” He looks at Blair, his expression tightening. “Did you see inside my head?”

Blair shakes his head. “No, your shields are too strong for that even if I tried. I would have had to push far harder than I would be willing to. And I didn’t try to look.”

Stiles nods. “Good.” He drops his head on Jonathan’s shoulder. “My forehead is still bruised. That is a fact I now remember. Ow.” And then he stiffens and straightens. “Any chance we could be in a room that has fewer people? Like, none of them?” He looks over at Agent Morgan. “Nothing against you, but neither of you—or me—apparently have shields worth a damn, and your anger is giving me a headache.”

\--

They end up in what was apparently once a bonding room when regulations in the state changed to make bonding rooms mandatory in all public buildings, but since they don’t have any Sentinels or Guides it’s now a spare file room.

There is a cushioned floor, though, a bit dusty and partially covered in file boxes, and Stiles turns on the light as Jonathan shuts the door behind him.

As soon as the door is closed, something inside of Stiles relaxes. The uncomfortable struggling-through-a-drugged-up-haze feeling is still there underneath his thoughts, and more than anything else it’s making it harder to block out everyone else’s shit. Jonathan’s most of all, but Jonathan at least seems to have some level of shielding, or maybe that’s the bond, and Stiles can poke at it if he wants but it’s not coming through as a continuous stream unless they’re touching.

Stiles drops down on the floor, sticking his hands behind his head and staring up at the ceiling. “I’m sorry about your kid.”

“Can we not talk about it?”

Stiles shrugs. He wouldn’t want to talk about his mom, either. “Sure.” He closes his eyes. “Sorry my head’s such a mess.” He feels the bird settle on his head, and he has no idea why the fuck it’s still following him around. But it’s apparently not shitting on him, so he lifts his hand and starts petting it. “My shields are kind of shot right now.”

Jonathan gives a sort of laugh. “I think they’re technically my shields.”

“Right.” The bird caws. “Whatever. I should call Scott. You’re probably not going to leave me alone to do that.”

“No.”

“Right.” Stiles pulls out his phone and opens his eyes just long enough to dial Scott’s number and stick it up to his ear. It rings twice, and then Scott says, “You’d better not be dead.”

“It’d be really hard for me to call you if I were dead.”

“How are things going? When are you coming home?”

“Fun fact—I have a Sentinel now. A temporary Sentinel. I possibly forgot to tell my dad that. Can you tell my dad that?”

“You have a Sentinel?”

“Yep,” Stiles says cheerfully. “He’s even here with me. Say hi; he’ll hear it.”

That should be unsubtle enough to make sure Scott doesn’t bring up werewolves or anything else they don’t want the military hearing about. Sure enough, Scott says a dutiful, “Hi, Stiles’s Sentinel.”

Jonathan laughs a little. “Tell your friend that I say hi.”

“He says hi back.” He doesn’t really want to let Jonathan know how good Scott’s hearing is. “So…I’m not dead. How ‘bout our town? Everything just like I left it? You set the house on fire?”

“Nope. Everything’s copacetic.”

“Kira get you a word-a-day calendar?”

“Lydia.”

Of course she did. “How’s our new lax bro? He adjusting okay?”

“In the past few days? He’s fine. Nothing to get angry about.” Scott sighs. “Are you okay where you are? I don’t want you in the middle of an investigation like that.”

Stiles laughs. “Bit hypocritical of you, isn’t it, given all the time we’ve spent running around looking for people? Remember La Iglesia?”

“But at least then I was there to keep you safe.”

“My Sentinel is almost fanatical about my safety. I’ll be fine.” He reaches up to stroke the bird that’s still, for no apparent reason, sitting on his head. “I have a bird, too, by the way.”

“A _bird_?” On cue, the bird caws, then starts grooming Stiles’s hair, because apparently that’s a thing that happens to him now. “Where did you get a bird from?”

“My soul.”

Scott is silent for a moment, then says, “You know what, I don’t want to know. As long as it’s not a fox.”

Stiles rides out the wave of irrational, inevitable panic that runs through him, then says, “We can ask Deaton about it when I get back. Or I can ask Blair, but he seems to think it’s special, whereas Deaton will just talk to me like I’m vaguely in the way.”

“You like him talking to you like that?”

“The familiarity is reassuring.” Stiles sighs. “When I go home, there’s some stuff we’re going to need to work on.”

“Your stuff or my stuff?”

“Mine. And can you ask Lydia if she or our second-favorite cop know anything about shielding and spreading emotions?”

“Sure, but don’t you have the Guide Prime with you? Can’t you just ask him?”

“You know me—I like a second opinion.” And he doesn’t really trust adults, a lot, other than his dad and Mrs. McCall and sometimes Deaton and occasionally Derek if he actually counts as an adult. Too many adults have tried to kill them. “Also I accidentally emotionally assaulted some feds, so that was fantastic.”

“Does it count as assault if it’s an accident?”

“Technically no, but it doesn’t make them dislike me any less.”

“Can you accidentally emotionally assault my dad?”

Stiles laughs. “It doesn’t count as an accident if I do it on purpose.”

“True. Well, maybe he’ll piss you off enough for you to do it by accident.”

“Yeah, okay.” Jonathan makes a noise, and Stiles opens his eyes to see him looking anxious. “I think I have to go. I’ll text you later. Let me know if anything comes up.”

“And you remember that we drove down to Mexico for Derek. We’ll come for you if you need us.”

“I know.” Stiles hangs up, sticking his phone in his pocket before he looks at Jonathan, who’s standing over him; his face is in shadows and Stiles isn’t sure what he’s reading from him.

Jonathan crosses his arms across his chest. “Do you hold all of your conversations in code?”

Somehow Stiles isn’t surprised that he noticed, though he’s a little surprised he called him on it. “Only the ones where someone can listen to both sides of it.”

“Does that happen a lot?”

Stiles shrugs, which is kind of awkward from lying down, but c’est la vie. “One of my friends is a Sentinel, and she likes to gossip. Are you going to keep standing over me?”

Jonathan stares at him for a moment, then drops down on his knees, straddling Stiles, which, okay, is not what he was expecting, and also their dicks are very close and this could get super awkward super quick because Stiles is a teenager.

Stiles blinks up at him. “Hey there, big guy. Do you need to bond or scent me or whatever?”

“I need you somewhere that doesn’t smell like guns.”

“I don’t get how you were so fine with me on a military ship where literally everyone has a gun, but you can’t deal with me in a police station. And it’s not like we could really get off that ship.”

Jonathan lets out a slow breath; Stiles gets the strong feeling he doesn’t want to talk about it, but it’s also something they have to talk about because this has become a problem. “I—Jack O’Neill—was the 2IC of the SGC for a long time, and after he split he took control of the SGC and then of Homeworld Security. The brass knows who I am. If I give an order, or if I need something, it’ll happen. Especially when it comes to you, because they all know me with a Guide. And they would never shoot you.”

“Feds and cops aren’t going to shoot me, either.”

“They’re not trained to deal with the same level of weirdness that my people are.”

“That doesn’t mean they’re going to _shoot_ me. I know what you’re afraid of, but I grew up around cops, and…look, I’m a white boy who has an Air Force Colonel and the Prime Pair on my side. I’m safe here. And also—” He’s not really sure the best way to say this. “We’re going to have to separate relatively soon, because the longer we’re attached the harder it’s going to be. So probably being less possessive will make the whole thing easier.”

Jonathan just bares his teeth at that, which, frankly, is not a helpful response.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter gave me so much trouble. But it's done (if it a bit short).


	22. Chapter 22

Jonathan stares at Stiles, teeth bared, and Stiles hears, a bit muffled, a phone ringing. It’s not his phone. Jonathan doesn’t move, as it rings, rings, rings—

“Are you going to get that?”

Jonathan’s eyelids lower slowly, and then he reaches in to his pocket and pulls out his phone. Putting it up to his ear, he snaps, “What?” There must be an answer, but Jonathan’s phone is set quiet enough that Stiles can’t even hear that someone is talking. Finally, he says, “Thanks. I’ll talk to Sheppard and Teal’c 2.0.” He hangs up, sticking the phone back into his pocket.

Stiles stares up at him. “What’s up?”

“We have the location.”

Jonathan climbs off of Stiles, standing; Stiles braces his arms behind him and pushes himself up—and then his arm crumples under him with a sharp burst of pain, and he just barely catches himself on his other arm to keep from bashing his head on the floor. “Okay,” he says, and his voice is almost steady. “Let’s try that a different way.”

Jonathan crouches down next to him. “You’re in pain.”

“Nice catch.” Stiles lets out a slow breath to try to get his breathing under control through the overwhelming throbbing pain in his arm. He got shot. He needs to remember that. And he had been doing pretty well with not fucking it up, but then Jonathan collapsed in his arms and he’s been ignoring it and now the pain is back with a vengeance. “Wow. That was fun. Okay.” Turning on to his not-fucked-up side, he pushes himself more or less upright. Jonathan braces his arm and gets him the rest of the way to his feet. “Thanks.”

“You need a painkiller.”

“I need a lot of things.” He takes in and lets out another breath. “Okay. I’m good.”

Jonathan levels a look at him. “You need a painkiller because I won’t get through a meeting with you smelling like this much pain.”

Stiles scowls at him. “You can’t just use the ‘I am an easily upset Sentinel’ excuse for everything.”

“But I can use it for this.”

“I was going to take them anyway, so just—” Stiles waves his good arm at Jonathan. “Shush. Let me be grumpy and in pain on my own without you being all reasonable about it.”

Jonathan snickers but doesn’t say anything, which is good, because it lets Stiles be grumpy and in pain in peace.

He grabs his backpack from the corner where it’s been sitting in the bullpen, or attempts to before Jonathan snatches it up and puts it over one shoulder. Stiles isn’t going to argue. His arm hurts like a son of a bitch, and he’s learning how to pick his battles. Sort of.

Agent Hotchner is talking to Agent Morgan when Stiles and Jonathan walk in, but they break off when Jonathan leads Stiles in. “Where’s Ronon?”

 Agent Morgan glances at Agent Hotchner, then says, “He stepped outside.”

“Of course he did.” Without raising his voice, Jonathan says, “Ellison, could you get Ronon for me?” Stiles can’t hear the response, but after a second Jonathan nods. Then he looks at Stiles. “Take your pain meds.”

Stiles resists a sullen ‘you’re not my dad’ mostly because the FBI agents are in the room and a little bit because he knows his dad would tell him the same thing. Instead, he pulls the bottle of less-strong painkillers out of his bag and dry-swallows one, then starts to hunt for his Adderall so he can marshal his thoughts into some sort of useful set of patterns. His inability to get himself to take his painkillers without prompting was probably at least in part because of his ADHD.

Agent Hotchner looks at Jonathan. “Has something happened?”

“I need to talk to Ronon and then I’ll let you know.”

Agent Hotchner examines him for a minute, then says, “We’ll give you the room, then.”

They step out of the room just as Ronon heads in, closing the door behind him. Jonathan stiffens a little but doesn’t have the same reaction as he had to the Feds earlier.

Ronon looks at Stiles. “You okay?” He signs the word he had said meant Guide in whatever language he was signing in.

Stiles nods. “I’m fine. I mean, the gunshot wound isn’t fantastic, but it’s old, and wow, you look angry right now.” He reaches out and pokes Ronon in the shoulder because he has fantastic self-preservation skills, which makes Jonathan look angry and Ronon look…something Stiles can’t really read. “I already have one person being all, me Sentinel, you helpless Guide. Also you don’t know me. So just…stop.”

Ronon stares at him for a really uncomfortably long time, and Stiles stares back because, again, no instinct for self-preservation, and then Ronon nods and looks at Jonathan. “What’s up?”

“They found the Guides.”

“Why aren’t we there, then?”

“Because they’re in Vermont, a place they couldn’t reasonably have gotten to in this span of time. And I don’t have a way to get in contact with Sheppard, so I need you to do that. I think Carter assumed I know SOP because she told me to inform you but didn’t tell me what we’re actually supposed to be doing and who has clearance to know what.

Ronon nods. “I’ll let Sheppard know. I haven’t been cleared on how your world operates.”

And then Stiles gets it, because he’s good at stuff. “You’re an alien.” And whoops, that was a bit too loud. “You’re an alien. That’s why I didn’t recognize the stuff in your head, because they’re not Earth things.”

He inclines his head. “I am.”

“Am I the only normal one in the room?” And then he remembers the tree, and the fact that, when unbonded at least, it’s apparently there and angry at him, even though it’s supposed to be gone, and he should probably ask Jonathan if he can see if it’s there even though Stiles isn’t sure if their bond works like that. “Never mind. Continue on. Guides have been found in, apparently, Vermont. And, actually, how did that happen?”

Jonathan makes a face. “Not sure how classified that is.”

Lovely. “Okay.”

The door opens, and Blair pokes his head in; Jonathan stiffens. Blair seems to see that, because he smiles a little. “We haven’t been listening in, but at some point I want to ask Stiles something. In private, preferably.”

Jonathan’s eyes narrow. “Is something wrong?”

“No, not particularly. But we do try to observe non-Guide-related confidentiality, and as this may be medical, I would prefer to have this conversation somewhere private.”

Stiles is fine with that, but Jonathan has freaked out enough in the past…while that this isn’t something he’s going to push on. Though he has no idea what the fuck this could be about. Jonathan stares at him for a minute, and then he nods. “Twenty minutes, as long as I know you’re inside the building and the only other person who can be in the room is your Sentinel.”

Stiles wants to give the ‘hey, I’m not a child and I don’t belong to you’ lecture, but he’s not really up for at the moment, so he nods. He takes a second to rub his wrist across Jonathan’s cheekbone like he did the night before so Jonathan doesn’t forget the bond is there or whatever the fuck the problem is. This whole thing is ridiculous. Why can’t it be like with werewolves where they just need to be able to hear the person to not freak the fuck out?

Also a thought he never thought he would have, why can’t this be more like the werewolves.

But those are things he shouldn’t think about right now, so he pulls away, following Blair out of the room. They head to the bonding room where Stiles had just been, and Jim touches Blair’s back as they pass but doesn’t follow them.

Blair takes the time to turn on the white noise generator before sitting on the floor and gesturing across from him. Stiles sinks down to the floor, bracing his arm against his chest a little because the painkillers haven’t quite kicked in yet.

“Sentinels can’t always be that needy,” he says before Blair can say anything. “I mean people have to be able to spend more than twenty minutes apart from each other or they would go crazy. I would go crazy. This is driving me crazy.”

Blair smiles. “No, this only lasts for the first week or so. Traditionally, as much time as possible in the first couple of days of bonding is spent sequestered from the rest of the world. That’s why paid bonding leave exists. Your situation is the exception to many rules. The settling of the bond is especially important in your case because of the strength of your ability, and so I regret that you haven’t been able to adequately settle your bond properly.”

“So it’s not supposed to be this much of a mess?”

“No, it’s not.” Blair looks kind of sad. “I want to talk to you about how you’re doing, something I should have done earlier, but first I do have something to ask you about.”

Stiles nods. “Shoot. Or, well, don’t, but—yeah. English. Confusing language. Go ahead.”

“When Spencer and I were…well, knocking you out, I saw something in your head. It felt a bit like a Guide had set up a shield in your head and then died with the shield still there, so there’s still an echo left. It’s not doing you any harm, but it meant that we had to push even harder than we would have just by virtue of your strength. Is there any way that what I described could have happened?”

Stiles takes a moment to breathe, to keep the panic down, because this is a goddamn mess, and he doesn’t want to talk about it. “As far as I know, a Guide has never set up a shield in my head.” And he’s not sure if he should tell Blair, but he’s so fucking sick of keeping secrets, and secrets get people dead, and people are dead, and he just wants to—

He doesn’t know what he wants.

“You have a thought about what it is, though.”

It’s somewhere between a statement and a question, and Stiles is just so tired, and he says, “It wasn’t a Guide.”

“As far as I know, there’s nothing other than a Guide that could set up a shield like that, except for possibly a strong, closely bonded Sentinel. More closely bonded than I think you are with Jonathan.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t Jonathan.” Stiles scrapes his good hand across his face. “Look, I can’t tell you about most of it because one, it’s mostly not my secret to tell, and two, I don’t know how the hell to explain it to an outsider. But—there’s a magic tree centered at the convergence of a bunch of ley lines, and it was…kind of in my head for a while, and I’m pretty sure it put it there.”

“I need you to explain that more.”

“No.”

Blair leans towards him. “I need to know what’s going on.”

“No.” Stiles shakes his head, just in case Blair isn’t getting the message. “There’s too much involved that would give away other people’s secrets, secrets that would put them and me in danger if they got out. So I’m not going to tell you. I shouldn’t even have told you as much as I did.” He probably wouldn’t have, either, if he hadn’t been so goddamn tired.

Blair looks frustrated, but then he says, “Stop me if we get to something you can’t tell me, but I would like to understand as much about this as I can so I can help you.” Stiles waves his hand in a ‘go on’ gesture. He can just not answer if he doesn’t want to. “So you said the tree was in your head for a while. When you’re talking about it being in your head, do you mean in the sense that Jonathan is in your head currently, or in the sense of your touch empathy, or in the way Spencer and I were in your head to knock you out?”

Stiles shakes his head. “None of the above.”

“How, then?”

“Uh.” Stiles so doesn’t want to talk about this. “In my head in the possession sense.”

Blair stares at him. “That’s impossible. There have been studies, and even I—even Inchaca—can’t actually possess somebody.”

“You’re thinking like it was a Guide. It wasn’t a Guide.”

“Are you sure?”

He can’t read, and there’s blood on his hands, so much blood, dripping across hands wrapped in bandages. “I’m not about to describe my trauma to you, so you know, let’s pass on that conversation.”

“Right. Sorry.” Blair makes a face. “I didn’t mean to sound like I didn’t believe you. There’s just no record of this even happening, and a number of failed attempts.”

“Again, not a Guide. It was in my head—there was shit in my head, and prying it out doesn’t mean scraping the remnants from inside my head. I’m not surprised there’s something left behind.” He knows there’s something left behind. Otherwise he wouldn’t have hallucinated the goddamn tree when he tried to meditate and make himself a moderately functional human being. Because of the course the tree, the tree that shouldn’t still be there, doesn’t want him to be functional.

But he has to wonder—he emerged while the tree was inside his head. What are the chances who he is—what he is—as a Guide is impacted by that? What are the chances he’s so strong because he has a little bit of tree still inside of him.

Wouldn’t that be the fucking rub?

“What are you thinking now?”

“Personal thoughts.” Stiles curls up a little so he can press his forehead against his knee, using the pressure to ground himself. “Why am I not fucking allowed private thoughts anymore?”

He didn’t quite mean to say that out loud, but it is true. He’s expected to share everything now, his emotions and his body and his fucking head, like they’re all owed it. They’re not.

“I know this is frustrating for you—”

“Do you?” Stiles looks up at him, suddenly furious. “Do you know how frustrating this is for me? You didn’t emerge in a mental institution and bond in the middle of a kidnapping investigation, with everyone telling you where to go and what to think and that you don’t belong to yourself anymore because some guy you don’t know needs you to keep him from losing his mind? I’m seventeen, and this is going to be the rest of my fucking life. Do you get that?” He’s on his feet now, looming over Blair, and he’s not really sure when he got there. “Do you understand that? The moment you stepped into that hospital room, this became the _rest of my life_.”

He turns and shoves out of the room, needing air before he starts screaming at the top of his lungs, only to stop short because Jonathan is standing a foot in front of him.

“Move.”

“We need to go.”

Of course they fucking do. “I need some air.”

“We don’t have time.”

Stiles grinds his teeth, and he’s definitely going to need dental implants or whatever the fuck they use by the time he’s thirty. “Get the fuck out of my way or I’m going to hit you.”

Jonathan steps out of the way, and Stiles heads past him, making a beeline to the door. His anxiety is too high at the moment to deal with this shit, and he’s going to regret this outburst in half an hour but right now he just needs out.

Jonathan follows him, because of course he does, but Stiles doesn’t have time for this shit and so he just gets outside, presses his back against the nearest wall, and gasps in the bitterly cold air. He just needs to get through this, and then he can go home. Once they’re done with this shit, he’ll separate from Jonathan and then he’ll go back to Beacon Hills and things will be a nightmare but it’ll be a nightmare he can deal with.

“Stiles.”

Stiles clenches his jaw. “Fuck off.”

“Are you okay?”

There’s a feeling like bugs walking across his back, like his skin crawling across his shoulder blades and up and down his spine. “Leave me the fuck alone.”

“I can’t do that.”

Stiles grinds his closed fist against the wall behind him, sharp points of pain against his skin, so he doesn’t punch Jonathan in the face. He’s so far into sensory overload, drowning in his anxiety, drowning in wanting to get out of his skin, in wanting to get out of here, and he just can’t fucking deal with this. “Go away.”

“You’re bleeding.”

Of course he fucking is. “Give me five fucking minutes without you hovering over me and I’ll be able to make myself functional, but you need to go away or I’m never going to get myself together. So _go away_.”

Jonathan goes away, and Stiles drops down so he’s crouched down against the wall, his back pressed flat against it, trying to get his breathing under control. He can’t do this. He can’t do this. He wants to go home.

But he can’t go home, not yet, and there are people who need to be saved, so he’s going to do what he always fucking does, get himself together, and go save someone.

Soon. He’ll do that soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oy.
> 
> The next Nest of Snakes chapter will be up in the next few days.


	23. Chapter 23

Five minutes after O’Neill-the-other comes back into the building pale and shaking, his Guide walks back in looking even worse, the sharp tang of blood coming from him. His hand is cradled against his chest, and Ronon fights the urge to do something about it because it’s not his place.

Guides on Sateda weren’t treated so territorially. There was no need to cling so tightly, when nobody would think to take away a Guide from the one who protected them, only to keep them safe when you were available to do so. Earth people seem to think holding on is required. He doesn’t understand it, but there’s nothing he can do about it.

Sheppard is the closest he can find to that, but from what he can tell Sheppard is a _khartai_ , one who does not find pleasure in bed, and sometimes _khartai_ connect differently to Guides or sensers than other people. But at least Sheppard understands that he has no interest in taking land and no need to close his fist around the throat of a Guide and call it keeping them safe. At least it lets him stay in the City of the Ancestors, because Sheppard has no fear of him trying to take it.

He keeps his distance from the Guide so that O’Neill-the-other will not fear theft and close his grip. Ronon can tell that the Guide does not like it, that it is making their bonding more difficult, but unless it begins to hurt the Guide he will not say anything more.

Sheppard shows up a couple minutes later, nodding to Ronon. “We heading out to beam?”

Ronon jerks his head towards the Guide and O’Neill-the-other, who are having a whispered conversation Ronon isn’t listening to. It isn’t his place.

Sheppard tsks. “I don’t like the idea of bringing a kid into this. I don’t know what kind of bloodbath this’ll be.”

“Will O’Neill allow us to leave without him?”

“I know I wouldn’t.”

“And will he go without his…Guide?” Ronon forces the earth word for it out, though he dislikes how it feels in his mouth. Too lacking in substance, without the dual meaning of the spoken word and the physical movement.

“Not if he’s like any other Sentinel I’ve met.” Sheppard sounds a little bitter, and Ronon is reminded that earth people don’t seem to believe in _khartai_ , even though the evidence is right in front of them. Sheppard never even told him he was one, though Ronon began guessing when he proposed the two of them go to bed as brothers-in-arms often do during the lull in a siege and Sheppard seemed to not understand the suggestion.

After a moment, O’Neill-the-other and the Guide head over to them, O’Neill-the-other’s hand closed around the Guide’s wrist. The Guide gives them a sheepish smile. “Sorry about the freak-out earlier. I’m, uh—not your problem. Anyway, what’s the plan?”

“We’re going to meet up with a contingent of Marines at the location we’ve pinpointed.” Sheppard looks at the Guide. “ _You_ will stay outside with a Marine guard. O’Neill, you can come in with us or stay with your Guide, but I’m not taking him in on a raid and General Carter will back me up on that.”

O’Neill-the-other nods. “DKC can get me functional without him for half an hour or so.”

Sheppard’s eyebrows go up. “That’s rare. Usually it’s the other way around.”

“Early in my service Guides weren’t allowed to serve on the front lines because of death-backlash, so DKC training involved leaving a Guide with a military guard.”

The Guide looks at him. “That’s why you didn’t have a problem with the Colonel having a gun but freaked out when Feds had them.”

O’Neill-the-other nods, then looks at Sheppard again. “Where’s the beam-out point?”

“We’re going to drive about five minutes away. We’ve informed the Prime Pair.”

“Then let’s go.”

\--

The person manning the beaming knows protocol well enough to give them warning, so John only takes a second to adjust his sense of touch to the new temperature instead of losing time to another grey-out. O’Neill startles the worst of the three Sentinels, though that’s likely because his body just isn’t acclimated to it the way theirs is.

A marine hurries over to them, saluting John, who nods back. “What do we have?”

“We think twelve life-signs, but the Daedalus is having a hard time getting a reading.”

Of course they are. Because this mess needed to be a little bit less safe. “I need three tac vests and a guard for the Guide.” The kid raises his hand then shoves it in his pocket, shoulders hunched. John doesn’t want him here. He really doesn’t. “Are your coms all hooked into the Daedalus?”

The marine nods. “Yes, sir.”

“Get me another com hooked into the Daedalus, and tell them to be prepared for beam-out of traumatized Guides.”

“Yes, sir.”

The marine hurries off, and John turns to O’Neill. “Give me a rundown on who we should be finding.”

“The Guides or the NID?”

“Guides first. Any strong enough to send out backlash when this turns violent?”

O’Neill hesitates, then says, “Dobbs is fifteen to twenty, I think. McKinley’s the highest, but I’d be surprised if she was higher than sixty. Miller-Gonzales is somewhere in between, not sure exactly where. So watch out for the blonde; she shouldn’t be strong enough without contact, but I remember her wearing a touch-empath bracelet.”

That could get tricky. “And the NID?”

O’Neill shakes his head. “No idea. I was too greyed-out for most of it to pick anything up, and my recollection of when I was in DKC is pretty shaky.”

“Okay.” The marine heads back and hands him a com, which he gives to O’Neill. They strap on the tac vests, and John accepts an assault rifle from him. O’Neill and Ronon accept their own guns, and O’Neill handles it like he knows what he’s doing.

Finally, the marine looks at the kid. “You’ll be with Lieutenant Liu out here, sir.”

O’Neill steps toward him. “I need to meet this Lieutenant.”

The marine nods. “Yes, sir. Follow me.”

They head over to the rest of the marines, and John turns to Ronon, who’s fiddling with the assault rifle. “You okay there?”

Ronon glares at it. “Wish I could have my gun. This thing feels too big.”

“Yeah, well, bright flashes of red light tend to stand out when we’re trying to pretend aliens don’t exist.” Ronon makes a face, looking at the house they’re just outside the perimeter of, and John gets the feeling he’s resisting the urge to rush in.

He’s pretty sure he’s right when Ronon says, “Think is might be easier sometimes to just care about territory.”

“It’s not like I don’t want to keep Guides safe.” He’s gotten that accusation a couple of times when he was able to function when a Guide was in danger. It’s not like he likes it. Atlantis, though—Atlantis is his territory. It’s _his_.

“Yeah, know that.” Ronon shrugs. “Not judging you or anything. Just saying it might be easier.”

In his ear, O’Neill says, “We’re ready to go.”

John lets DKC slide over him like a blanket as his pupils contract and then expand and he can feel every thread of fabric on his skin, his brain processing faster and more efficiently to keep up. His sight stabilizes first, sharpening details, penetrating shadows, and then his hearing filters in and then out every heartbeat in the area, cataloging by distance, and everything else resolves around him until everything is perfectly clear.

They make entry with Ronon at his back, and they take out one guard, two, white-male-early-thirties-halitosis-smells-like-fear-and-goa’uld-but-isn’t-goa’uld, and then they sweep two more rooms, clear, clear, before they reach the main room.

It’s large, with three medical cots with twenty-something-year-olds unconscious in two of them, a metal table in the middle with a third, and a large tank with two swimming, wriggling symbiotes in it. A man in a white lab coat is standing over the kid on the table, while another stands over the tank.

Behind John, a marine swears softly, the sound doubled up in John’s ear.

John levels his gun at the scientist over the kid. “Take two steps back and put your hands on your head.”

“Colonel Sheppard, is it?” John keeps himself steady even though he wants to react to the threat of this enemy knowing his identity. “I don’t think so.”

“Two steps back, hands on your head.” He gestures for the marines to head towards the kids in the beds. “Ronon, get the man at the tank. O’Neill, you’re with him.”

John approaches the man over the bed, two marines flanking him, then stops when the scientist yanks up the blonde girl’s limp body up and in front of him, pressing her against his body. Resisting the urge to curse by sheer force, John moves his aim higher, focusing on the center of the man’s forehead. The problem is that, while he’s a good shot, he’d rather not have to trust his aim and the gun to keep the girl safe.

“Put her down.”

“I don’t think so, Colonel. This girl here is the next generation of protection for the world, the power of Guides under our control.”

“And you think Goa’ulds are the answer?” O’Neill sounds derisive in that purely O’Neill way. “What are they’re going to do, talk the enemy to death?”

The scientist gives a derisive look of his own; it’s nowhere near as good. “These are no ordinary Goa’uld symbiotes. These are specially bred with the genetic memory that we have implanted, so that they will be on our side. They will be the perfect soldiers, without needing a Sentinel.” He looks at O’Neill. “Though you, we would have liked you, strong as you are. We don’t know whether it would have worked for you, but it would have been worth the try.”

O’Neill sneers at him from where he is standing with a gun on the man at the tank, who Ronon is restraining. “Yeah, done the snake-in-the-head thing, don’t need a repeat. I—” He goes rigid, gun going down as he spins. John doesn’t turn, forcing himself to keep his eyes and his gun on the scientist as a smile grows on the scientist’s face. O’Neill’s face drains of blood. “Stiles.”

\--

For once in his life, Stiles is happy to be out of the action. Mostly.

Well, he’s glad to not be somewhere where he could be shot (again), especially because his hand also hurts from where he scraped it on the wall that he hit back in the police station (in a different state, and they teleported, and at some point he’s going to learn how to deal with that but that is not this day because holy shit).

But, like always, he wants to know what the fuck is going on.

He heard a few gunshots, but there hasn’t been anything for a couple minutes, and he thinks that might be a good thing, but it also might not be, and he has no way of knowing _and that sucks_.

So he turns to the marine next to him, a Lieutenant Liu, who looks competent and steady and utterly unconcerned. “Do you think they’re okay?”

She nods. “Yes, sir. We would have been notified if there was any trouble.”

Stiles fidgets with his sleeve. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, sir, I’m—”

Blood blooms from the center of her forehead, splattering across his face, and she topples over backwards; Stiles drops to the ground before he even registers what happens, and he has the wild thought that something has come from Chris fucking Argent after all.

After the second it takes for him to process the fact that being as out in the open as they apparently are is a bad fucking idea, he starts running, trying to find someone else. They were separated on purpose because of some weird Sentinel thing, and most of the people are inside, and his brain isn’t telling him where anyone is, and he just needs to get away.

A hand closes around his upper arm, almost yanking his arm out of its socket as the person pulls him to a stop and plants a gun at his back. Stiles goes rigid at the press of cold metal through his shirt.

“Move.”

Stiles swallows, the sound loud in his ears. “I’m, uh—”

The gun shifts up to his shoulder. “Start walking or I start putting bullets in you.”

Okay, walking it is. The man behind him directs him to the building, which is a sign that maybe things aren’t going fantastic, and he needs a way out of here because being him used as a hostage won’t go well for anyone. Least of all him.

And his dad told him what to do in these situations, but it was mostly “play along until you can get to someone who can help you or you can escape” which is not super helpful advice at the moment.

Stiles wants to say something, anything, it doesn’t matter what, because talking is how he keeps himself from freaking out, but he’s afraid if he opens his mouth the guy will shoot him or maybe he’ll just throw up, so he keeps his mouth shut.

He knows in theory there are ways to disarm a person who has a gun pressed to your back, because you know where the gun is, but he’s also 100% not confident enough in his hand-to-hand combat abilities to take this guy on, no matter what weird shit his dad and Allison and Lydia have taught him. This isn’t his thing. He’s the thinking person. Scott is the punching person. That’s the way the world works. (It didn’t used to be, but that was before Peter Hale.)

The guy clearly knows what he’s doing or at least where he’s going, because he directs Stiles through the building until they get to a doorway to a room where a bunch of marines and Colonel Sheppard and Ronon and Jonathan and two unconscious people—make that three—and two creepy-looking scientists are.

And they’re all staring at him, other than Colonel Sheppard who has his gun leveled at the scientist who’s holding an unconscious woman up like a human shield. Dick.

Jonathan takes a step towards him, looking not particularly stable. “Stiles.”

“Hi.” The gun shifts from his back to the side of his head, and oh, okay, that’s awesome. “I’m fine.”

“There’s blood,” Ronon says.

“It’s not mine,” Stiles tells him, at the same time Jonathan says, “Lieutenant Liu.”

“Enough of this chatter,” less-of-an-obvious-dick-because-he-doesn’t-have-a-human-shield-scientist says. “Unless you want us to kill the Guide, you will release us.”

Ronon hesitates then _lets the guy go_ , which, no, unhelpful, don’t do that. Stupid fucking protectiveness of Guides. The guy then, before anyone can react, reaches into the tank full creepy swimming things, and shoves one at Jonathan.

Like a switch, the connection holding Stiles to Jonathan snaps off.

Panic-fear-anger-fear-joy-anger-anger-pain floods through him, a maelstrom of emotion with no anchor, and he’s flying and drowning, clinging on to everything he can find, anything he can find, points of darkness in the chaos of light, and he holds on but they don’t weigh him down. Instead he drags them up with him, until they’re being torn apart with him, and he tries to let them go so they won’t fly apart but he has no hands to unclench and no teeth to unbite.

He flies, lost in the chaos.


	24. Chapter 24

Someone is unhappy nearby.

Stiles can feel it like a flame, burning and sickly cold, a pinpointed location that comes with the sound of plastic against plastic, and beyond it flame upon flame upon flame, pressed close but burning distinctly.

The plastic-on-plastic stops. “You awake?” The voice is female, unfamiliar.

Stiles forces his eyes open through what feels like a pound of grit to look over and blink at the woman sitting in the chair next to his bed. In another fucking hospital room. “Who’re you?” His voice sounds like he chewed glass, which is a bit like what his throat feels like. “Where are we?”

“My name is Cassie. We’re in the SGC hospital at the moment, which means your family and friends don’t have access. I’m a…friend of Jonathan’s.” She holds up her knitting needles, to which what looks like part of a shawl is attached. “He kicked me out an hour or so ago.”

He recognizes the name, though it takes him a second to figure out why. “You’re the person General O’Neill was talking about protecting, and that you wouldn’t like it.”

She laughs. “Yeah, well, Jack’s always been too protective. They all have.” She straightens the corner of his blanket. “How are you feeling?”

He tries to take stock, but mostly all he can feel is all those points of fire. “What happened?”

“You can get that from someone who was there. How are you feeling?”

“You a doctor or something?”

“Once I finish up med school I will be. But mostly they let me in here because they thought a civilian would be a friendlier face. How are you feeling?”

“There are too many people in my head, but they’re all out there. You’re all out there.”

Her eyebrows go up. “You can feel us?”

“Yeah.”

“What do we feel like?”

“Fire.” Stiles reaches up and rubs his eyes with his good hand. “The lieutenant was shot. Did anyone else die?”

Cassie shakes her head. “They’re all alive.”

Something registers with Stiles for the first time. “Jonathan? He’s not—where is he? I thought he couldn’t—I can’t feel him. We’re not—the bond is gone.”

She grimaces, then stands. “I’m going to go get someone who can tell you more about what’s going on.” Suddenly, she grins at him. “Nice to meet you, Stiles. Hope it’s not the last time.”

And then she’s going.

Stiles slumps back down on the bed, letting out a slow breath. He’s free. What the fuck does that mean?

A minute later, Daniel walks into the room. He looks happy enough that Stiles is pretty sure things are still good—not dead is a low bar—but he’s also alone, which is interesting.

“No Sentinel General O’Neill or whatever I’m supposed to call him.”

“Jack’s in DC. We’ll get to that in a minute. I see you met Cassie.”

“She’s General O’Neill and General Carter’s daughter?”

Daniel nods, sitting down in the chair next to his bed. “We tend to think of her as ours broadly. She was adopted by them after her adoptive mother died, but we all helped raise her. She said you were feeling our emotions.”

“Yeah, can we not talk about that?”

“What would you rather talk about?”

“Do you know what happened?”

Daniel hesitates, then leans back in the chair. “Some of it is classified, and complicated. Easy answer is that Jonathan was forced to sever your bond without warning during an emergency situation, and the backlash knocked out everyone in the room except for Colonel Sheppard, who was able to call for a beam-out. You fell unconscious during the beam up, which was probably a good thing considering you likely would have knocked out the room. Something we should have considered beforehand. We had to sedate Jonathan because of the combination of dropping out of DKC and the loss of the bond.”

Jesus. “The—the Guides? They’re okay?”

“They’re fine. Two of them have been brought back to their family and the third is being held for observation.”

“So I—I can leave? You’ll let me go back home or whatever?”

“We will, though there’s something we’d like you to consider first.”

Stiles doesn’t really want to deal with any more suggestions or good ideas or things that he should consider, seeing as the last ones were “hey, go to the conference, that’ll be fun” and “hey, come to a kidnapping investigation with us, that’ll be safe.” But he’s not really sure he has a choice in the matter, and he’s always been incurably curious, so he nods.

Daniel pulls back his collar to show Stiles the tattoo that marks him as a bonded Guide, even though Stiles has seen it before. “As I mentioned, I’m currently here—Colorado, by the way—while Jack is in Washington DC. You might be wondering how that’s possible.”

“Yeah, kind of.” He would be more if he could think through the pressure of the flames, everywhere, hot-cold-burning-wet flames.

“Jack—and Jonathan by extension—has a gene that allows the person to connect to a specific type of alien technology. We’ve discovered that continuous connection to that technology can act as a substitute for a bond, which can allow for a Sentinel to function either without a bonded Guide or at a great distance from their bonded Guide. We’ve also figured out how to allow for bonded Guides in this situation to build up their own shields when separated from their Sentinels.”

Stiles blinks at him, kind of confused. His brain isn’t working up to snuff, probably because the flames are so goddamn distracting, all of the sadness-anger-pain-determination-happiness-glee-resolve. “But I’m not bonded to Jonathan anymore.”

Daniel makes a face. “Yeah, Jack always tells me I need to be clearer. What we’re suggesting—what I’m suggesting—is that you rebond, permanently, with Jonathan. Before you say anything, this suggestion is coming because you’ve indicated that you don’t want to be bonded.”

“So you’re suggesting I bond?” That logic doesn’t track, even for him.

“So we’re suggesting that you bond in a way that means that you virtually never need to interact with them if you don’t want to. I am the strongest example of this working. I spend about three-quarters to four-fifths of my time away from Jack, and both of us are able to function perfectly fine apart from each other. The one thing is that, when you do see each other, it’s necessary to spend a couple of days together to stabilize the bonds so that you can rebuilding your shields before you separate again.”

“That’s—” Stiles sticks his thumb in his mouth to chew on the pad of it. “Why would you want that? Why would he want that? I get why I would want it, but why would he. What’s in it for him?”

“While the technology can act as a substitute, it isn’t perfect. The bond is better, even when augmented by the technology.”

“And he’s, what, suddenly going to be okay with being apart from me after spending the past couple of days acting like being more than five feet away from me hurts?”

Daniel scrubs a hand though his hair. “Yeah, that won’t be the easiest sell. But without a bond, even with a technological bond filling the gap, he’ll take days, maybe even a week, to stabilize.”

Jesus. Stiles flops back down on the bed, throwing his good arm over his eyes. “Have you talked to him? Are you offering this without asking him?”

“He’s sedated again.”

Fantastic. “I’m not going to say anything before I know that he wants this, too.”

“Fair enough.”

“And can I have a phone or something to call my dad?” He sighs. “Also where is my stuff? Is it still in the police station in…whatever state I left it in? And do the Prime Pair know where I am?”

“I can get you a phone and check on the rest of the answers,” Daniel tells him, then heads out of the room. He returns a couple minutes later with a cell phone. “This is a secure phone. The call with be monitored to make sure you don’t say anything classified, so…don’t say anything classified, because they will cut the line.”

That’s…actually pretty cool. “I’m just going to call my dad and makes sure he know I’m not dead.”

“That’s fine. I’ll leave you alone.”

It’s a false kind of privacy, seeing as Daniel just told him they were going to listen in, but he appreciates it anyway. He doesn’t really want anyone staring at him while he talks to his dad, especially because this is going to be an incredibly uncomfortably coded conversation.

He dials his dad’s cell phone number then sticks the phone up to his ear. It’s a flip phone, so old that he’s pretty sure they don’t make them like this anymore, but it also means that he can’t access anything other than a phone. No Facebook on this phone.

“Stiles?” There’s noise in the background, and then it cuts off, probably when his dad closes the door to his office. “Are you okay? Where are you?”

“Uh.” Right, that thing. “Classified. I mean, I’m fine, that’s not the classified part, my arm hurts a little—”

“How is where you are classified?”

“The other option for where I am is ‘I don’t know.’”

“Stiles—”

“Let’s go with classified.”

His dad makes a noise of frustration. “Stiles. What’s going on?”

“Good news,” Stiles says brightly, “the kidnapped Guides were found and are safe.”

His dad sighs. “I heard. What’s the bad news?”

“Why do you think there’s bad news?”

“Because you never start talking about just good things with ‘good news.’”

His dad knows him too well. Stiles pulls his knees in, rubbing his forehead. He has a hell of a headache, right in the center of his forehead, and the flames are fucking distracting. “Well, I’m not sure if it counts as bad news or not, but…the temporary bond I was in broke.”

His dad is silent for a minute, and then he asks, “What temporary bond?”

Oh. Fuck. That was a conversation he never actually had with his dad.

“So I bonded a couple days ago, sort of by accident, with one of the kidnapped people, who was coming down from Danger-Keyed Counterzoning and didn’t tell anyone and I was there and am strong enough to bond with him and so we bonded but it was meant to be temporary and now it’s gone. Hooray. Sort of. But there’s a way for me to be bonded back with him permanently but not have to deal with it and they suggested it and I’m not sure what I’m going to do but I might end up with a bonded person. Which is useful because backlash is super real and things kind of suck right now.”

“Okay.” His dad lets out a breath. “I’ll yell at you for keeping things from me later. But, seriously, what were you thinking, bonding with a soldier? That’s—that’s a bad idea.”

“Yeah, kind of figured that out. I—my shields are shot right now, and it’s like the whole world is on fire. I don’t want to be bonded, I can’t—Beacon Hills is messy enough without a twenty-something military-ish—think the protectiveness of Scott at his protectiest paired with Derek Hale at his most unstable with all of that obsession focused on me. And, I mean, if we do this thing, theoretically I wouldn’t have to see him if I didn’t want to, which is kind of appealing, and I also I would have shields again. Because right now they’re kind of gone.”

“I want to meet him.”

Stiles sucks in a breath. “Yeah, I’m not sure if that’s going to happen. Not because of you but because I wasn’t kidding that where I am is classified.”

“What have you gotten yourself into?” His dad sounds resigned, like trapped-under-a-sentient-tree resigned, and Stiles hates that they’ve gotten to this point. He hates that he’s gotten his dad to this point. Because this is his fault.

But he still can’t tell him. “That’s classified, too, kind of. I signed an NDA. I’ll ask. But I’m—I want to go home.”

“Wherever you are, they can’t hold you.”

“Yeah.” Stiles sighs. “I’ll call you back.”

“If you don’t, I’m having Scott track you down.”

“Go with Danny.”

His dad makes a strangled noise. “Don’t tell me these things.”

“Bye, dad.”

\--

Jonathan is burning alive. Every nerve ending is raw, exposed, the press of the sheets against his skin, the rasp of the scrubs across his chest. He’s blind, his hearing flicking between shrieking and virtual silence.

He hasn’t been this bad since Iraq.

Warmth moves closer to his skin, not quite touching. He can feel the shield of a Guide near him. Daniel.

He opens his mouth, and he can taste antiseptics, blood. “Daniel.”

“Hey.” Daniel’s soft voice goes from booming to almost inaudible halfway through the word. “You okay for me to touch you?”

Jonathan swallows. “Too sensitive.” He knows Daniel will know what that means.

Daniel hesitates, then says, “I should be able to give you a piece of my shield. I need to talk to you.”

Jonathan doesn’t want a piece of his shield, the mocking reminder of what he can’t have anymore, but he also needs at least a day before he can stabilize on another Ancient device, so he nods. He can feel Daniel’s hand getting closer to his shoulder, can feel the heat like an itch—

And then it fades, and Jonathan’s vision lightens to a gentle blur. It’ll all stabilize in a minute or two, he knows, but the relief from pain is such as shock he can’t help a sharp inhalation.

Daniel’s head moves into his field of vision, still one massive blob. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Thanks.” A bit gingerly, Jonathan reaches up to run a hand through his hair, feeling the strands—oily and damp with sweat—against his palm. It doesn’t hurt. “What do you need to talk about?”

“You. And Stiles.”

Jonathan tenses, though his muscles which had been so rigid in his pain protest the movement. “Is something wrong?”

“You mean other than the fact that both of your shields are down and we have a teenager in the most secret facility on Earth?” Blob-Daniel pushes at his face, probably pushing his glasses back up his nose.

“What do you want to talk about, then?”

\--

Sometime later, after Daniel leaves and the world disintegrates back into blind pain, Stiles walks into the room. Jonathan tracks him through his footsteps, his scent, resisting the urge to turn unseeing eyes in his direction because he knows he’ll regret the movement.

Stiles sits down next to him, the chair scraping, and this close he feels like _Guide_ , unbonded, intoxicating Guide, like comfort in the middle of a storm and his ear against a beating heart.

Stiles laughs. “You look like shit.”

“I’m sure,” Jonathan says, then has to stop because the word brushes his jaw against his scrubs and discomfort lances through him. “I’m sure I feel worse.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

“No, I don’t—” A pressure like eight points, soft in a way of nothing else against his skin right now, lands on his chest, and everything snaps into focus, the pain disappearing not in a wave but all at once. He blinks at the bird sitting on his chest, then at Stiles. The bird seems displeased by him looking away, because it crawls up his chest to peck at his hair.

Jonathan reaches up to stroke the bird, which is disconcertingly real-feeling, and Stiles makes a face. “My bird is preening you.” He pauses. “I have a bird.”

Jonathan shrugs. “I’ve seen weirder things.” And your bird is acting as a five-sense shield, so I won’t complain about a little preening.”

“It’s—I don’t think that’s supposed to happen.” Stiles drops his head in his hands for a second before looking back up at him. “Look, I know Daniel talked to you, but…do you really want to do this?”

“What part of me having bonding-enhanced shields do you think I’m going to protest?”

“The part where we’re going to be separated, where yesterday you weren’t sure if we were going to be able to be in different rooms while the other one peed?”

Jonathan can see how that would be confusing. “While this will be…uncomfortable”—to say the least—“I will have Ancient technology to ground on.”

“What if you find someone you want to bond with?”

“It’s more likely that you’ll find that.” Both given that he’s younger and given that Guides have an easier time finding compatible bonds. Theoretically a Guide of Stiles’s strength could bond with a one-sense Sentinel, while a five-sense Sentinel requires a strong Guide.

Stiles makes a face. “I have no interest in subjecting anyone else to the disaster that is my life.”

“So you want to do this?”

“How will we figure out when we see each other, stuff like that?”

“That’ll depend on how the bond sets.” There’s a knock on the door, and Jonathan calls, “Come in.”

The door opens and a woman sticks her head in—forties, he thinks, Vietnamese or Korean, dressed in a white lab coat. She smiles at the two of them, heading towards them. “Hi, I’m Dr. Lam, the CMO here.” She glances at Jonathan, then the bird, then offers her hand to Stiles. He shakes briefly, and Jonathan sets his teeth to avoid saying something stupid. Stiles doesn’t belong to him, not now, not yet. “I understand from Daniel that you’re planning on bonding again and then living separated the way that he does with General O’Neill.”

Stiles nods. “Yeah.”

She pulls out an activated Ancient device—his device, if he’s not mistaken, which is basically a glowy paperweight that probably did something useful with one of the old Ancient pieces of tech but is now totally useless—and hands it over to Jonathan, who takes it. He can feel it in the back of his head, immediately, filling the gap he always forgets exists.

He lets out a breath, slowly, letting tension run out of his shoulders.

“So what’s the plan, Doc?”

“I assume you know how to bond, given that you’ve done it before. The pathway should already be there, so it should actually be easier this time.” She glances at the ball in his hand. “This may sound odd, but I’m actually going to recommend that you touch as little as possible after the bonding. This will give Mr. Stilinski a chance to build up his shields organically so that the distance isn’t a shock to his system.”

“Okay.” Stiles swallows. “We can do that.” His bird lets out a caw that sounds agreeing, or at least agreeable, then goes back to picking at Jonathan’s hair.

Jonathan nods, closes his eyes, and reaches out for the light sitting beside him.

\--

John takes the moment after beaming to breathe, eyes still pressed closed as Atlantis’s song fills his ears. This feels like what he always assumed coming home was supposed to feel like, if home hadn’t been stony silences and a father who only loved him until he was no longer willing to play his father’s game. But Atlantis—Atlantis sinks into him like oxygen, even though he itches to fly her back to the galaxy where she belongs.

“Find yourself a Guide while you were out?”

And then there’s Rodney McKay.

John opens his eyes and pastes a smirk on his face. “Technically I found a few.” One of whom is sedated in the SGC until the Tok’ra can figure out what exactly is up with the snake they stuck in his head.

McKay leers at him. “Found one to bring home with you?”

John swallows his irritation, not at Rodney but at the insistence that everyone has that he needs a Guide. He has his Ancient technology and he has Atlantis, and that’s all he needs. That’s all he’s ever needed.

“It was a rescue mission, McKay, not an orgy.”

McKay opens his mouth again, but Ronon muscles him aside, grabbing his arm as he goes and saying, “C’mon, McKay. I need a sparring partner and you’re going soft.”

“I’m not going soft,” McKay protests as Ronon drags him away. “And even if I was, it’s not like we’re going on any mission. I don’t need—get off me, you Neanderthal.”

John shoots a grateful look at the back of Ronon’s retreating head, then heads towards one of the piers, brushing a hand against the wall as he goes. Atlantis hums in response, and he smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you think this is a disappointing ending, don't worry, it's not over. 
> 
> Also I just started learning gun defense but still don't know yet what Stiles should have done in the previous chapter if he had a gun pressed to his back because we're not up to that yet. So it's perfectly feasible for Stiles not to know. Ha.


	25. Chapter 25

Stiles hasn’t done his chemistry homework.

An airman who didn’t look much older than him returned his backpack before he went back to Beacon Hills, which Stiles is ever so grateful for, but he’s sitting in chemistry class and everyone is passing up their chemistry homework and he just hasn’t done it.

Well that just makes his life.

He’s had a low-grade headache since he separated from Jonathan, though Daniel said that that should go away once his shields settled. His bird—which he thinks he should name at some point, except the idea kind of freaks him out so he might just ignore it until he can’t anymore—wasn’t happy about the separation, and then it spent eight hours anxiously preening Stiles’s hair—though, fortunately, it stayed invisible on the hellishly crowded plane ride and only reappeared to freak out his dad once they got in the car. It’s gone at the moment, mostly because he gave it a lecture on proper decorum, which basically means not having his soul-bird following him around through Beacon Hills High School. They have enough shit going on already.

Moral of the story, his head fucking hurts and he doesn’t want to have to deal with the teacher being a smug asshole but he forgot his homework and everything just broadly sucks.

And then Principal Thomas sticks his head in the room, looks around, and says, “Ah, Mr. Stilinski. With me, please.”

And…it just got worse. New-guy-what's-his-name stares at him as Stiles pops up, grabs his stuff, and heads to the front of the room. He waits until the door is closed behind him and they’re partway down the hallway before asking, “Is something wrong with my dad?”

Principal Thomas shakes his head. “No, your dad’s fine. This is about something different.”

For once in his life, Stiles literally cannot think of what he could have done wrong. “Okay?”

They reach the Principal’s office, and Stiles follows him in, shutting the door behind him. Principal Thomas sits down in his chair, sliding a piece of paper across his desk. Stiles drops his backpack on the floor to lean over and look at it. It looks like a note. And at the bottom is Blair’s signature.

Principal Thomas is examining his face when he looks up. “The office received this by fax a few minutes ago, asking that you be excused from work that you haven’t completed over break because of ‘psycho-empathetic distress’. Is this a joke?”

“Um.” Stiles looks back down on it, and wow, he really did use that phrase. “I don’t think so.”

“So you didn’t fax this to us to get out of having not done your work?”

Wow, they give him way too much credit. “I don’t know if I’ve ever used a fax machine in my life.” Principal Thomas keeps staring at him. “No, I didn’t fax this to you.”

“And you mean for me to believe that this was sent by the Guide Prime of the United States, about you?”

Stiles squints at it. “I mean, it looks like his signature. I can call him if you want.” Principal Thomas still looks skeptical. “Or what you can do is call the Cascade S/G Center—where he works—and see if you can connect to him.”

Principal Thomas insists on finding the phone number online and calling from his office phone, which he puts on speaker phone as it rings.

Two rings in, the receptionist picks up. “Cascade Sentinel-Guide Center, this is Kelly speaking. How can I help you?”

Before Principal Thomas can say anything, Stiles says, “This is Stiles Stilinski. Is Blair there?”

“I’ll check—he’s in the building but I’m not sure if he’s busy at the moment. If it’s an emergency, I can transfer you to Jim or someone else in the Center.”

“No, that’s fine, it’s not an emergency. I just need to ask him something.”

“Okay. Hold for one moment please.”

Stiles keeps staring at the phone during the silence, even though he knows Principal Thomas, and a minute later the phone clicks and Blair says, “Stiles? What’s up?”

This time Principal Thomas cuts in early to say, “Mr. Sandburg, I’m calling from Beacon Hills High School in regards to a fax that you sent earlier today regarding Mr. Stilinski here.”

“It’s Dr. Sandburg, and I’d be happy to answer any questions as long as they don’t infringe on Stiles’s privacy rights. Stiles, are you here?”

“Yep.”

“Without written permission from Mr. Stilinski or his father, because of California law, I can’t provide any information about what his status may or may not be. What I can do is tell you that, during his spring break, he suffered from psycho-empathetic distress that left him unable to complete any work that might have been assigned during that time. He is currently not suffering from psycho-empathetic distress.” His voice turns a touch less formal. “Unless you have something to tell me.”

“My head hurts,” Stiles tells him, “but I’m fine.”

Principal Thomas is staring at him even more pointedly now. “Is this like when you went crazy a few months ago?”

Stiles flinches because he can’t help it, because Eichen House is still too raw in his head, too tied up with Allison, but he thinks it mostly get drowned out by Blair’s sharp, “You call yourself an educator? That’s no way to speak to a student. And for your information, it has nothing to do with ‘going crazy’, as you so ignorantly termed it, but rather an adverse interaction with a Guide’s empathetic abilities.”

Well, that’s one way to put it. And Stiles doesn’t really have any interest in showing Principal Thomas—the dick—his Guide necklace, and oh, hey, he’s going to need to get a tattoo soon, probably, except he’s not actually sure how he’s supposed to explain having a Sentinel without actually having a Sentinel, so maybe not.

“Is this something the school should be concerned about?”

“If Stiles says it’s under control, then there should be no problem.”

Principal Thomas glances at Stiles, probably imagining all of the things Stiles would claim were under control even if they were definitely a problem. Something could probably be visibly on fire and he would try to claim it was under control.

By which he means he found half a dead person on purpose and then then pretended it was normal.

He’s good at things.

But nobody is saying anything, so he figures it’s probably his turn to say something. “It’s all fine.”

“See, I believed that more before you said it.” There’s a noise from Blair’s side of the phone. “I have to go. If you have any other questions you can email or fax me at the information provided on the paper I sent you. And Stiles, keep in touch.” And then he hangs up.

Principal Thomas looks up at Stiles. “You’re on a first name basis with the Guide Prime of North America?”

Stiles shrugs. “Kind of.”

Principal Thomas peers at him for another moment, then leans back and says, “Back to class, now. I’ll inform the teachers that you’ll receive an extension on your work, though I expect you to have it in by the end of the week.”

“I can do that.” Probably. “Thanks.” Stiles heads out of the room.

\--

“What do we have?”

Daniel eyes Jonathan, looking concerned; Jonathan ignores it as best as he can, even though the concern grates on him. “You sure you’re ready to be up yet?”

“I’m fine.” Jonathan peers out the observation glass down at the CMO, who’s standing over the snaked girl. They’re waiting for the Tok’ra to come take the snake out of her.

Daniel hums. “You sure you’re cleared for this, then? You’re a bit of an…odd case, clearance-wise.”

“I’m a bit of a weird case, everything-wise. Carter cleared it. And besides, it’s me.”

Daniel hesitates for a second, then nods, and Jonathan tries not to take the hesitation too personally. It’s been a long time. They don’t know him anymore, and he doesn’t know them. Except in all the ways it feels like he does. He hasn’t had anyone since them, even if they’ve had a whole rash of people. But then Daniel says, “She’s woken up a few times, if you can call it that. Lam can get her to eat and answer some basic questions, but there’s a depersonalization issue—there seems to be a mental disconnect between the brain and the body.”

“So not a normal snake, then.”

“Not at all. Lam thinks that they were basically grown as blank slates, with no genetic memory, maybe to be programmed as soldiers. The best theory we have at the moment is that the Guides were being taken to be implanted so they could be human weapons.”

Jonathan stiffens, the wave of protectiveness running through him like a wave, and he lets it, lets it peak and crash so he can speak without the fury coming through. “Did we get all of them?”

“Still unclear. They’re mostly ex-NID, left for regular reasons. Nothing suspicious in their hirings or their firings; they all came in after Barrett cleaned up the place. The biggest questions right now are how they got the symbiotes and where the queen is.”

“So they could go after Guides again.”

Daniel shoots him an irritatingly knowing look. “Your Guide is safe. The only people who knew he were involved are part of the SGC or are in our custody.”

Jonathan knows that intellectually, but it’s still hard to grasp emotionally. He wants his Guide safe with him, not off in some town in California where he can’t get to him, surrounded again by whatever’s put the horror in his head. They’re not supposed to leave Guides alone. It’s not supposed to work that way.

And he knows why he has to do this, knows the only way they could re-bond was to let Stiles go, but it doesn’t mean he has to like it.

Dr. Lam looks up at the glass, saying, “Mr. O’Neill. While you’re there, can you come down here? I want to get your read on something.”

Jonathan is basically as far as you can get from a doctor, but he learned from Janet not to argue with CMOs, so he heads out of the room and down to the entrance to the quarantine room. The airman guard lets him in, and he shoves his hands in his pockets and enters.

Lam nods at him. “Great, thank you. I’m not the most familiar with Sentinels and Guides, given that we don’t have that many, but Daniel and General O’Neill have been quite a crash course over the past years. From what I understand, you should still be able to get an empathetic read off of her.”

“I’m not a Guide.”

“I misspoke. You should still be able to read that she’s a Guide.”

“Do you have some reason to think she isn’t?” Jonathan looks at the girl—the woman—who’s laying on the cot. “I know her, more or less. She’s a Guide.”

“Humor me and check.”

Jonathan heads over to her, stopping on the other side from Dr. Lam. He’s still twitchy enough that standing next to people he doesn’t know makes him uncomfortable. His shields are already up, not quite solid yet but solid enough, and there’s a possibility that he might need to pull them down a little to feel her with as strong as Stiles is, but—but she doesn’t feel like a Guide, not really.

In fact, she doesn’t feel like anything. Not mentally. Guides always feel like something, at least to Sentinels. At least to him.

“That’s unnerving.”

Lam looks at him. “What?”

“She’s not reading as a Guide.”

“So she’s reading as, uh—one of us, then.”

Jonathan smiles. “You can use the word normal. I won’t be offended. And no. She’s reading more like a void. Sense-wise I know she’s there, but—it may just be because I know she’s a Guide, or supposed to be. It may also be because of how I’m bonded.”

Lam nods. “True. I’ll have another Sentinel check her when they get a chance.” She focuses on him. “How are you feeling, Mr. O’Neill?”

“Like I’d really like for people to stop calling me Mister.”

“What would you rather be called?”

“You can stick with Jonathan.”

She heads over to the disposal bin, pulling off her gloves as she goes. “Okay, Jonathan. How are you feeling?”

Jonathan fights a grimace. “Fine.”

“Any side effects of the distance? Headaches? Nausea? Blurry vision?”

His head hasn’t stopped hurting since Stiles left and took that bird of his with him. “I’m fine.”

“Right.” She gestures towards the door. “I’d like to check you out again, make sure your blood pressure and temperature are where they should be.”

“Is that really necessary, Doc?”

One eyebrow arches up. “Do you have anything better to do?”

“I need to call my thesis advisor and the professor I TA for so they don’t think I’m dead.”

“You can do that after I check you. Now come on.”

\--

Spencer doesn’t like what he’s seeing.

He knows they’re supposed to leave cases alone once they’re done, to walk away because there are always more cases and there are always questions that aren’t answered, but this one—this one is bothering him.

The attackers, first of all—Russian the first time, American the second, with no apparent connection between them. The first time they go after a conference, the second time a school, so different ages, and S/G academic conferences skew more heavily male while university S/G meetings skew far more heavily female which removes all gender components. They were aiming for unbonded Guides, which makes sense for the university but less so for the conference where Guides were on average older and so more likely to be bonded.

And then the rescues themselves—the first one where the attackers and hostages disappeared literally into thin air and the second one where the attackers managed to get to the East Coast and the Air Force managed to pinpoint them without, apparently, any help from anybody. And a classified rescue of civilians doesn’t make any sense.

Colonel Sheppard is his own sort of mystery, clearly not a traditional member of the military despite his rank. Neither his demeanor nor his manner of speaking read military. His “contractor” friend read more military than the Colonel, though some sort of foreign military, and he seemed to occasionally speak—particularly to Stiles Stilinski—in a form of sign language Spencer has never seen before.

The pairing of the victim and Stilinski was also bizarre—few Sentinels could stand to be around that many people so soon after even a temporary bonding, regardless of the problems that he had had. And the fact that he was able to go into Danger-Keyed Counterzoning also doesn’t track logically.

Everything together, everything he has seen, everything he has written down and laid out in front of it, it all points to a bigger picture, one much more involved than the Air Force implied. One that doesn’t seem like it’s over.

So Spencer doesn’t like what he’s seeing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My best guess is that there are about 5 chapters left in the story.
> 
> Also I have no idea whether or not he's in chemistry in junior year and am too lazy to check, but for the sake of the story, let's pretend he is.


	26. Chapter 26

“Let me get this straight.”

Stiles snickers. “I don’t think I can help you with that.”

“Why—” Scott rolls his eyes. “A bi joke? Really?”

“I’ll have you know,” Stiles informs him loftily, “that I am entitled to at least one joke about my sexuality per 24 hour period, and I have not used one in over a week.”

Scott looks like he wants to argue but also isn’t sure if that’s an actual rule, so instead he just shakes his head and says, “Anyway, I’m trying to figure out what’s going on with you.”

“I would like to know the same thing,” his father puts in from the doorway, a mostly-untouched glass of scotch in his hand. He sets it down on the table in front of him before he sits down. “Seeing as you haven’t bothered to tell me anything that happened since you got home. And I’m not sure whether I should be happy or worried that you haven’t told Scott anything, either.”

“It’s just—” Stiles chews on the pad of his thumb for a second. “Complicated.”

Neither of them look like they believe that, which, okay, yeah, he can’t blame them for. Even though it’s true.

“It is complicated,” he says. “There’s also a lot that I can’t tell you.”

“Is someone threatening you?” his dad asks.

“No. I just—” Goddamn it. “Ask me questions and I’ll answer them if I can. I’m just not sure how to talk about it.”

His dad still looks weirdly unhappy about that, but Stiles doesn’t know how the hell to fix that. “Where were you just before you came home?”

Yeah, okay, this isn’t going to help make him look less unhappy. “It’s classified.”

“You said that before.”

“That’s because it’s true.”

“And how exactly did you get involved in something classified?”

Oi. This isn’t something Stiles really knows how to or wants to answer, because he’s genuinely not really sure what he’s allowed to talk about—because hey, signing NDAs while only semi-functional is a bad idea—but he has to say something. “Do you remember, uh, Jack O’Neill? Daniel mentioned him and you said that you knew him or had heard of him or whatever.” His dad nods, eyes narrowing. “So with the kidnapping stuff, General O’Neill was involved in the investigation, and…there’s classified stuff.”

“But how did you get to know about classified information?”

“I, um. I signed an NDA.”

“You’re not eighteen.”

Stiles pulls his thumb out of his mouth long enough to wave his hands around. “Fun fact, if you’re over sixteen and have a bonded Sentinel or Guide who’s over eighteen you count as over eighteen when signing contracts.”

Scott blinks at him. “You don’t have a Sentinel.”

Fuck. “I—actually don’t know how much of this I’m allowed to tell you.”

“You don’t have a tattoo,” his dad points out.

Stiles clasps his hand on his neck, even though there’s nothing there. “Yeah. No. I—okay, this can’t be classified. So yeah, I ended up bonding with one of the kidnapping victims. The Sentinel one. Because—well, because he was crashing from DKC, Danger-Keyed Counterzoning, and he didn’t tell anyone until he was already crashing in the middle of a hospital, and I was strong enough to bond with him because he’s a five-sense and I’m…really strong, and so I made a surface bond, and then stuff happened, and then we unbonded, and—” He takes in a deep breath then lets it out slowly.

Scott leans towards him. “And what?”

“And now we’re bonded again. Like real bonded.”

His dad is shaking his head before he’s even done talking. “That’s impossible.”

“I—and my headache—assure you that isn’t true.”

“A Sentinel—particularly a Sentinel who’s capable of DKC, which means he’s military—would never let his Guide be this distance from him, particularly this soon after bonding.” His dad leans towards him. “I saw military Sentinels when I was in the Air Force. I know what it looks like.”

“Yeah, he wasn’t too pleased.”

“This isn’t about being pleased. It’s not _possible_.”

Stiles presses his thumb to his eyebrow. The pressure doesn’t help his headache. “This part is actually classified. It’s related to a classified thing. But it’s true. You can ask Lydia if you want, she should be able to feel it.” It’s kind of surprising she hasn’t said anything about it yet, actually, even though it’s only been like a day and a half. “Look, I really want to tell you, but the NDA was literally like if you talk about this you’ll be charged with treason or whatever. You being me. I’d be charged with treason. It’s not ideal, but it mostly keeps me from being a touch empath—because, by the way, that happened too, and it sucks because apparently I only see the worst part of everything because things _suck_ —and it means I’m slightly less likely to go crazy at like twenty, so hooray for that. And he’s mostly fine when he’s not being a handsy dick.”

His dad stiffens. “Did he touch you?”

“He was—he is—my bonded Sentinel, so yeah. But not like—he sees me more like his kid, I think, than a potential fu—uh. Bed friend.”

“His kid?” Scott’s brow furrows. “How old is he?”

Stiles shrugs. “Twenty-something. Look, again, complicated. But anyway, it’s all settled now, and at some point if you want to meet him—”

“I want to meet him,” his dad and Scott say simultaneously, and lovely, great, over-protectiveness from literally everyone in his life. Why can’t he go be near Lydia, who will just snap at him for being stupid?

“ _If you want to meet him_ ,” Stiles continues a bit sharply, “we can figure something out, but it’ll have to wait a while because if I saw him so soon after the bonding it would screw up the thing letting us stay apart and we would have to be around each other for a while while the shields reoriented themselves. Or something.”

His dad takes a long drink of scotch, swallows it, then says, “So I understand, you are currently bonded to a military Sentinel in his twenties.”

“Yep.”

“And were you planning on telling this to anyone?”

Stiles shrugs, and hey, his arm hurts less. Whoo. “Probably?”

His dad takes another drink of scotch, and Stiles resists the urge to snatch the glass away and either dump it or drink the rest of it himself. “Do you want to be bonded to him?”

“Um.” Stiles leans back in his chair, shoving his hand through his hair. He doesn’t want to have this conversation, he really doesn’t, because they’re all going to take it the wrong way and it’s going to be a mess and he doesn’t want his dad—or Scott—trying to track Jonathan down to hurt him or whatever. “It depends on how you define want.”

“Stiles.”

“Being bonded to him is the best of a bad situation, because he’s basically the only person I can be bonded to without having to be around them 24/7. So do I want to be bonded to someone that I’m not allowed to talk about, who isn’t great at respecting things like me wanting him to leave me alone? No, not really. Like, he’s a fine person, and he’s attractive and all that jazz, but being bonded to him is, no, not ideal. But not bonding was going to screw him up too, and I was a mess, and it also means that I don’t need to have to find someone to bond with which is apparently surprisingly complicated given that I’m, you know, me.”

“So now what?”

Stiles glances at Scott. “Now we go about our lives. As long as nothing happens, we both just live our lives separately.”

Scott rolls his eyes. “As long as nothing happens?”

“I meant to him. He’s more likely to destabilize and need me. But probably won’t. I don’t think.”

“Because of how you two are separated?”

Scott really does not do subtle well. “Maybe, but I actually meant that he’s apparently pretty stable and also has a low-stress job. Or at least a low-violence job. He’s a PhD student. Candidate. Whatever it’s called.” Stiles drops his head down on the table, putting his hands over his head. His forehead is throbbing with headache-pain, and so are his temples, his cheek. This separation is such a pain, and he just wants to—

He just wants to go back to being a normal person, a non-Guide, but that’s not going to fucking happen, so he just needs to get used to it.

Scott’s hand lands on his shoulder. “You okay?”

“Everything sucks and I’m tired, but yeah, I’m okay.” He picks his head back up. “Look, really, I’m fine. Just…don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”

\--

Jonathan is beginning to really dislike being back at school. It’s tense, for one thing, after the attack, and people know he was taken and so stare whenever they recognize him. Half the people who have shown up to his office hours since he returned have been there just so ask about it.

And being a newly bonded Sentinel around unbonded Guides while separated from his own Guide is…uncomfortable.

It’s like an itch against his skin, and almost undeniable urge to head to California and find his Guide and keep him safe and never let him go again.

This is why his Guide is uncomfortable with him, he knows, or at least one of the reasons; while some Guides want to be protected, want to be kept safe, his Guide clearly does not, at least not entirely. And he doesn’t quite understand it—he’s a Sentinel, and Guides are precious, and he’s military so he knows how to fucking take care of a Guide—but he knows if he ever wants to be able to spend more than a few hours every couple months—or years—with his Guide, he has to figure out how to respect that.

As much as it burns him to do so.

Because every ounce of him is screaming that, if he leaves him alone, especially with the nightmares in his head, he’ll end up like Charlie.

It’s not a thought Jonathan can stand.

But he has to be able to function separate from his Guide or all of this was for naught, so he forces himself to pull out a pen and go back to grading papers.

\--

The moment John Stilinski finds the door to his house open, he knows something is wrong.

Stiles has always been careful about safety—or at least that part of safety, safety that could impact more than just him—but since the mess with Scott began he has been fastidious about locking the door whether or not he’s home.

And he was supposed to be home. It’s the weekend after he got back, and Stiles promised he would stay home and rest and get some actual work done. So John draws his gun from his holster and enters, calling, “Stiles?”

No answer. He clears the kitchen then the living room, and he’s at the stairs when he spots blood. A drop and a smear, but enough.

“ _Stiles_?”

Still no answer, so he heads up the stairs and through the second floor, sweeping each room as he goes. Nothing. Nothing. No Stiles.

The cop part of him knows he should call for backup, get someone to process the scene, but instead he pulls out his phone and dials Scott’s number. Scott picks up two rings in, and John demands, “I need to know, is any of your stuff going on? Your werewolf stuff? I’m asking as Stiles’s dad, not as a cop.”

“Uh.” Scott sounds confused and distracted. “No? No. There’s no—nothing’s going on.” John hears a girl’s voice from near the phone. Kira, he thinks.

“Is Stiles with you?”

“No. He’s not.”

“Do you know where he is?”

Scott’s voice turns sharp. “What’s going on?”

“Scott, I need you to answer my question.”

“No, I don’t know where he is. I thought he was staying home. That’s what he told me. What’s going on?”

“Stiles is missing.”

Scott arrives ten minutes later, eyes glowing red as he pulls off his motorcycle helmet and strides towards the house. He looks more like an adult than John has ever seen, and John is glad for that, even though the whole situation makes him sad. These children should never have had to grow up this fast, not them or Derek Hale.

But on the other hand, he needs Scott’s sense of smell, and he also needs Scott’s knowledge of the weirdness that goes on in the town. Because frankly right now he really hopes it’s one of the weird things and not a continuation of that kidnapping case Stiles got himself embroiled in.

He follows Scott into the house, saying, “Can you smell anything or anyone? A vampire, maybe, or whatever you guys go up against?”

Scott wanders around the house for a while, sniffing every once in a while, and John trails after him feeling superfluous. Finally, Scott shakes his head. “I’m not smelling any other werewolves. Druids smell mostly human except greener, and I don’t smell any of those, and I don’t think there have been any Darachs here, because they smell like decay. Also as far as I know there haven’t been any human sacrifices. There are people I don’t recognize, though, men, and guns.”

“So nothing freaky?”

“Not unless you count men with guns as freaky.” He glances at John’s sidearm. “Sorry.”

“The fact that there are men with gun in my house is not something I’m happy about.” John scrubs a hand against his face, really wishing he had a drink. “Is there any chance he could be with anyone else?”

Scott shakes his head. “I called Lydia, and she’s basically the only person he could be with other than me. But the people with guns—who do you think has him?”

John doesn’t know, but he knows what he has to do.

So he pulls out his phone and dials. It’s barely one ring before there’s a click. “Tell me what happened to my son.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is super short and not exactly how I wanted it, but on the other hand, I'm done with finals and will be graduating in a few days, so at least there's that.
> 
> Also I have an absurd number of characters with some variation of the name John.


	27. Chapter 27

“Kidnapping in California. Wheels up in twenty.”

It’s not until they’re actually on the plane preparing for takeoff, Hotch handing out files on the victim, that Derek has a chance to ask, “Why are we being called in on a single kidnapping?”

JJ, flipping through the file, makes a noise. “Look at who the victim is.”

Derek opens the file and fights the urge to swear at it. This kid. Again. “What do we have?”

“His father came home from work to find the door open and his son gone, with some blood on the floor. He called the Prime Pair immediately afterwards, and they notified us.”

“Any chance the kid could have run away?” Derek asks.

“Not according to the father. And given the fact that he’s almost been kidnapped once and then was just involved in the investigation”—something which they’re all still unhappy about, though Hotch doesn’t mention that—“a relation to the case seems likely.”

Rossi is looking at the last page of the file. “It says here the father is a cop.”

Hotch nods. “Sheriff. Mother died years ago of natural causes.”

Rossi flips back to the first page, then whistles. “Is this really his level?”

They all turn to the page, and Derek feels his jaw drop at the level listed—95. Higher than the Guide Prime of the United States, which frankly most of the country had thought was impossible. No wonder he had been able to do so much damage when he had accidentally melted down in the conference room when they were talking to his temporary Sentinel.

“Are you telling me that we were working with the strongest Guide in the country—maybe the world—and nobody knew it?”

Alex is running her finger down the sheet. “Look at his emergence date.”

A few months ago. That’s not long, particularly for his level of power. But what was likely a hellish transition period isn’t the issue at the moment. “What about his Sentinel?”

Spencer shakes his head. “As I understand, it was a surface bonding, intending to exist only until the end of the investigation. As he has returned to California and was alone to be kidnapped, there bond must have been ended previously.”

“So we have an unbonded Guide stronger than any Guide we’ve ever encountered before in the hands of the unsub. If he breaks down during the rescue, we may not be able to get to him.”

“How did they get the Guides back before?”

Hotch shakes his head. “I’ve requested that information, but it’s still classified. We’re meeting with his father at the house because it’s the primary crime scene. Alex and Rossi, I want you to head to his school, see what you can find out. JJ, I want you to head to the sheriff’s office and start coordinating with them. The rest of us will join you with the sheriff once we’ve cleared the crime scene. Any questions?”

JJ looks up from the file to ask, “Has there been communication with the Air Force? If this is related to the case, they might have information we need.”

“Get in touch with them once we land.”

“Who’s our contact point with them on this?”

Unexpectedly, Hotch makes a face. “Unclear. All of our non-in person contact with them was via the Prime Pair. They’re being deliberately obtuse, probably because of whatever classified work Jonathan O’Neill is involved in. I have contact information for General Jack O’Neill.”

“High rank for a contact point,” JJ says.

“Any relation to Jonathan O’Neill?”

“Unclear, but likely. We have no contact information for Colonel Sheppard or Ronon”—for whom they never got a last name—“and the Air Force is being as difficult as possible to deal with.”

JJ nods. “I’ll get in contact with this General O’Neill when we land.” She looks back down at the file. “There’s no chance that this could be unrelated?”

Spencer’s lips thin, and then he says, “The town has had a rash of assaults and unexplained murders over the past two years, some of which apparently connected to an arson that killed most of a family seven years ago. However, given Stiles’s involvement in the kidnapping investigation, there is a high probability that the connection is to the recent crimes as opposed to the earlier ones.”

Hence why they’re flying out to California for a single kidnapping. Though Derek has to admit to himself that it’s probably good that they’re involved; the kidnapping of a high level Guide is bound to be a mess, and if it’s handled badly it could become a high profile mess. Which means that they need to run this cleanly and quickly so this doesn’t all go to hell.

There are three police cars at the crime scene when they arrive, two cops outside, and they all show their credentials to be let in. Hotch, Derek, and Spencer head in, being greeted at the door by Sheriff Stilinski. He looks calmer than Derek would expect given that his son is missing, offering all three of them firm handshakes. “I’m assuming they called in the feds because of the mess he was involved in with the kidnapping ring.”

Hotch nods. “We were called in because we’re operating under the assumption that the disappearance is related to the prior kidnappings.”

The Sheriff frowns at that. “I thought all of the perpetrators were caught or killed.”

“We are investigating that.” The Sheriff seems to remember that he’s keeping them outside, because he backs up so he can enter the house. It’s a nice enough house, neater than most houses lived in by only a teenage boy and a father who, given his job, is likely rarely home. It could speak to an controlling father or just a kid who likes neatness. Solidly middle class; the house doesn’t speak of a lot of excess money, but mostly comfortable living.

Derek offers his hand to the Sheriff. “Derek Morgan.”

Sheriff Stilinski shakes firmly but without any excess grip. “John Stilinski. You can call me John.”

“Aaron Hotchner,” Hotch says. “I’m this is Dr. Spencer Reid.”

John nods. “Stiles mentioned Dr. Reid. One of the only things he could talk about that wasn’t classified.” He gestures at the room. “This is where Stiles was taken from.”

Hotch’s expression sharpens. “Was there a witness?”

He shakes his head. “There—” There are steps on the stairs behind him, and a young man in a police uniform heads down them—followed by a teenage girl. John’s expression focuses on them. “You find anything else?”

The girl shakes her head. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

John nods to them as the two enter the room; the girl immediately walks over to the couch, running two fingers over the back of it. She looks civilian, and Derek is really starting to hate having this many civilians involved in their investigations. “One of my deputies, Jordan Parrish. And Lydia Martin.”

Without seeming to take his attention off of the girl, Parrish moves his collar out of the way to show his bonded Guide tattoo. Because that’s what they need. More Sentinels and Guides.

A second later, she turns back towards the four of them and says, “Four assailants, guns. The blood is Stiles’s, but that’s the only blood in the house—the only new blood. They drugged him, unless you regularly drip midazolam on your couch.”

Deputy Parrish nods. “It’s the safest drug to use on Guides. Fast acting, fewest side effects, and the least risk of interaction with Guide abilities. Which means that they likely targeted him for being a Guide or are at least aware of his Guide ability.”

Lydia glances at her Guide without seeming to pay attention to the four of them. “If they keep him on a steady drip of percilin or maybe alkasam—”

“Neither of those are confirmed as effective above level eighty.”

She nods. “Right. And they can’t even stick a Guide in his head to keep him under.” Finally she looks at Hotch. “We’re discussing how they would keep Stiles’s Guide abilities under control. As you may be aware, Stiles is strong, strong enough that he could take them down if he’s conscious.”

“So they would need a way to keep him under safely,” Deputy Parrish adds. “Which requires more care than you might think. Assuming they want to keep him alive.”

John nods. “Okay, thanks Lydia. You can head home now. Parrish, you going to be functional without her right now?”

“I’ll walk her out.”

Once the two of them are out, John turns back to them, saying, “Sorry about that—Lydia and Parrish are the only Sentinel/Guide pair in the county, and I didn’t want the space to be contaminated by your walkthrough.”

“It’s been a few hours,” Derek points out.

“They were indisposed.” For the first time, the calm slips on John’s face. “Look, can we get on with this? I want to find my son.”

“I’ll talk to you in the kitchen,” Hotch says, “while Agent Morgan and Dr. Reid walk through his room and the room where he was taken.”

John nods. “Yeah, sure. Look, I know how this goes, you don’t need to beat around the bush. You don’t have to be gentle—I just want to find my son.”

\--

Scott is not happy.

He knows Stiles occasionally relishes in unhappiness for the sake of unhappiness—different from his occasional bouts of depression or the PTSD they basically all have—but Scott fundamentally likes being happy. It makes him…happy.

Which sounds stupid even in his head.

But the point is that he’s unhappy and he hates it, but he knows the only way to be happy again is to get Stiles back. Which is why he’s currently sitting in the police station watching even run around like chickens with their heads cut off.

At some point, a pretty blond woman whom Scott is pretty sure is a fed sits next to him, asking, “Do you know Stiles?”

Scott nods. “He’s my best friend.”

She smiles. “You must be Scott. I’m JJ.”

“Is that Agent JJ?”

“It’s Agent Jareau. Do you know anything that might help us? Anything about what’s going on?”

“If I knew anything about what was going on, I would have told Stiles’s dad already.” He sounds a little stiff, he knows, but he hates the implication that he would hide information that could help. Stiles’s dad knows everything now, so he wouldn’t hide anything from him.

She nods. “That’s good. There have been a lot of murders in the town, a lot of violence. Do you know anything about that?”

Scott stiffens, because this is classic, this is just like his dad all over again. “Anything you need to know is in the case files. This has nothing to do with that.”

“You know that?”

“Yes, I do.” Sheriff Stilinski steps into the building, and Scott pops up, heading over to him. There are feds nearby, so Scott just says, “Tell me what I can do to help.”

Sheriff Stilinski shoves a hand through his hair in a move that’s so much like Stiles it’s a little disconcerting. “Just keep your cell phone charged and on.”

Scott nods, hating that there’s nothing he can do because this is all human stuff and he’s kind of terrible at fighting human stuff, so he just heads back over to the chair, drops down, and puts his head in his hands.

He sits there for a while, at one point getting candy from the vending machine just to have something to do, and he knows the feds don’t want him there but Sheriff Stilinski won’t kick him out.

At some point, three men walk in—two white guys and a…not white guy with dreadlocks—one of whom is wearing a military uniform. Air Force, Scott thinks, though of course the person who would know is Stiles. The military one heads over to Sheriff Stilinski’s office, while the other white guy looks kind of like a mess. And like a Sentinel, given that his pupils and nostrils are doing something between what werewolves’ do and what Lydia’s do.

So even though he might be wrong, Scott pops up out of the chair, heads over to him, and asks, “Are you Stiles’s Sentinel?”

The guy jerks his head towards Scott, and he looks like he’s taking a half-second to process things. Scott knows what that feels like, when there’s too much of everything and you’re so focused on one thing that everything else is just sort of out of step. For him that had been Allison. He guesses for this guy it’s Stiles. “Who are you?”

“Scott. McCall. Stiles is my best friend.”

The guy stares at him for a solid thirty seconds, then nods. “He is my Guide. Jonathan O’Neill.”

“You should probably meet his dad.” Scott thinks of how screwed up it makes Lydia for Parrish to be in danger. “And, uh, are you okay?”

Jonathan kind of almost smiles. “I’ll go meet his father.”

And then he’s left with just dreadlocks guy. Scott nods to him. “Hi.” The guy nods back. “Cool, nice chat. I’m going to go over there now.”

He wanders back over and sits down in the chair, tuning his hearing to the Sheriff. He wouldn’t usually eavesdrop like this—okay, maybe he would—but he really wants to hear the Sheriff meeting Stiles’s Sentinel. Mostly because he didn’t get a chance to interrogate him because there isn’t time.

“—assisting you in this investigation. And this is Jonathan O’Neill.”

Stiles’s dad sounds tired when he asks, “And you are?”

“Your son’s Sentinel.”

There’s a pause, a sigh, and then, “I’ll make a fuss over the fact that you’re older than I would like once my son is no longer in the hands of people who like kidnapping Guides. I’m assuming there isn’t some sort of magic bonding tracking that’ll let you know where he is.”

“No. But if I get close, I’ll know it. You—”

“You a Sentinel?”

The voice booms oddly, loud in the wrong direction, and Scott jerks when he realizes that it’s coming from the guy with dreadlocks whose name he still hasn’t gotten, who’s standing near him. He blinks at the guy, tuning his hearing back to the room he’s in. “What?”

“You a Sentinel? You were listening to them.”

Oh. Shit. Scott shakes his head. “No, I’m not. Uh. I’m not a Sentinel. I’m just—I was spacing out.” The guy looks like he doesn’t believe him, but also like he doesn’t really care, which is good enough for right now. “I’m Scott, by the way.”

“Ronon.”

“That your first name or your last name?”

“It’s my name.”

Okay, whatever. Scott doesn’t really care right now, because right now all he cares about is Stiles. “Are you military or something? Is that why you’re not doing cop things?”

“I’m a contractor and a Sentinel.” He picks his head up. “The Primes are here.”

\--

Jonathan is fairly certain the only reason he’s still process anything that’s going on around him is the knowledge if he loses it it will hurt their chances at getting Stiles back. Colonel Sheppard’s sharp gaze isn’t hurting, though it grates a bit, this young Sentinel who is of a higher rank than him—now—who is also seeking to find his Guide.

The other one—Ronon—doesn’t bother him as much at the moment, mostly because he doesn’t seem to have interest in anything beyond protection. And the man is dangerous, hard as hell. At the moment, he’s reading ally more than competitor.

With his training, even being around multiple unbonded Sentinels shouldn’t bother him this much. But the Ancient tech doesn’t make up enough of the gap that having a Guide with him does to make him totally stable out of his Guide’s presence, particularly when his Guide is in this much danger. He has no idea how Jack does it.

He’s so keyed up that he’s tracking the Prime Pair through the parking lot before he registers that they’ve arrived, and then he strides out of the sheriff’s office and out to where they’re walking in. Politeness would probably be a good idea, but he doesn’t have it in him right now, so he just says, “I’m a five-sense in a territory you’re in, I’ve informed you, let’s go.”

He thinks the Sentinel Prime growls at him, but he’s not functional enough to process it, so he just turns around and heads back towards Colonel Sheppard.

There’s a calming effect from the Guide Prime, he knows, if he gets close enough, but he can’t deal with that right now, can’t stand to be calmed, so he just gets as far away from him as he can. He doesn’t want calm. He wants coldly angry. It’s the only thing that’ll keep him functional through all of this.

He can’t risk DKC right now, not while he doesn’t know when they’re going to get Stiles back and when he doesn’t know how functional Stiles will be in able to being able to talk him down from the black hole of it. Because bonding can be a stopgap measure, but it was still barely functional after it happened.

But he can’t think of that, of any of that, right now. He just has to think about the fact that Stiles is still alive because he would know if the bond was broken, and then he has to get to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy winter!
> 
> (Also this chapter is done hooray.)


	28. Chapter 28

Stiles wakes up to blankness, like when you become conscious in the middle of a coma, unable to see or move but still aware.

He has a body, he knows, somewhere, he must have a body, he must have eyelids that can open and lungs that inhaling and exhaling and a heart that is beating but he cannot feel them, feel any of it. And, much as he tries, he cannot scream.

\--

Jonathan can’t sleep. He’s been awake for too long, ignoring carefully worded instructions from Colonel Sheppard and less-carefully worded orders from the Sentinel Prime to get some fucking sleep so he’ll be functional when they find Stiles, but the only thing in his head is his Guide, running in circles in his mind, a thread made of smoke that he can’t quite grip.

So he’s pacing the police station floor, fifteen steps in one direction, pivot, fifteen steps in the other direction, pivot, walk, pivot, and then his Guide’s friend, the one who smells wrong, is pacing next to him.

Jonathan goes an entire cycle of walks and pivots before he manages to not only get his mouth open but actually say anything. “Why do you smell wrong?”

Not the words he intended to come out, but they’re not obscenities, so it’s a start.

“Puberty?” the boy offers.

Jonathan considers that with more seriousness than it likely deserves, mostly because it’s the only way to keep even a little bit of his mind off of the fact that his Guide is _gone_. “Puberty doesn’t usually make people smell like canines.”

The boy stiffens. “You planning on staying with Stiles forever?”

“No Sentinel bonds with the plan of leaving their Guide.”

The kid seems to consider it for a minute, then shrugs, keeping perfect pace with Jonathan as he pivots again. “You planning on fucking him over to the government? Given that you’re military.”

“I’m not military.” And that only stings a little to say.

“Sure.” He snorts. “If I answer your question, you planning on telling the government? Otherwise, I can go pace in that direction instead.”

Jonathan opens his mouth but picks up the taste of Stiles, _Guide_ , and loses a moment to the reminder that Stiles is gone, he’s gone, and Jonathan has to find him. But when he comes back to himself, he’s still pacing in time, and the boy is still pacing with him. “I’m good at keeping secrets, and loyalty to my Guide is above all else. If he wouldn’t want me to tell, I won’t.”

“Fair enough.” The boy laughs. “Stiles is remarkably good at collecting loyalty. Well, so—we’re werewolves. Not Stiles. Stiles is human. Guide-human. But human. But…I’m not.”

Now Jonathan stops, and he has the visceral image of closing his hand around the boy’s neck, pressing him up against a wall, and breaking his fingers one by one. But his voice is almost steady when he says, “I’m not in the mood for jokes right now.”

The kid blinks, and then his eyes are glowing red, circles of crimson that are warm against the harsh florescence of the police station. “I’d show you more, but there are security cameras in here and I’d also rather you not freak out on me. Freak out more on me.” He looks sober. “They won’t let me join in because I’m a civilian and a teenager, but I can track, and I don’t need a reference for Stiles’s scent.”

“We have three five-sense Sentinels involved in this investigation,” Jonathan says because he really doesn’t want a civilian teenager involved in this. Particularly not his Guide’s friend.

“I lost the person keeping me stable a few months ago,” the kid says. “So, one, I know what that feels like. And two, Stiles is the next closest thing I have, except more so because I’ve known him basically since I was born. I could kill you, right now. I could kill anyone in this room. I won’t, but I could. If you can use my help, I’d advise taking it.” His eyes fade back from red. “I don’t particularly like you, but I won’t take things away from Stiles. So don’t fuck him up.”

“We need to find him first.”

“We’ll find him. I’m going to go pace over there now.” And then the kid—the _werewolf_ —walks away.

Jonathan should deal with that, should do something about that, but instead he just…pivots, and walks.

\--

Stiles opens his eyes and then realizes he can open his eyes, he has eyes, he has a body, and there is white above him, patterned squares that he realizes are tiles, ceiling tiles, hospital ceiling tiles, he’s in a hospital, he’s drugged in a hospital, he’s drugged in a hospital, he’s in a hospital and nothing hurts and he shouldn’t be drugged in a hospital, he shouldn’t be here, he shouldn’t be here.

“The Guide is awake.”

“He still seems blocked, given that he hasn’t dropped us yet. I want him back under within the next ten minutes.”

“It’s not safe to give him the same dosage of midazolam right now. There’s too much still in his system.”

“Apparently not, if he’s awake.”

“I’d feel safer giving him alkasam—”

“Give him the midazolam. It’s not the mind we need intact, just his powers.”

Stiles blinks. The world smears. He’s gone.

\--

“Is there any signature that we can find, any way to trace them the way we traced them before?”

Sheppard shakes his head. “It looks like they didn’t use tech. Which means that there’s a relatively small perimeter that they can be in, but it also means that we don’t have the same way to track them. That may be because it’s how we tracked them before, or because we took out their only means of doing so. Either way, we’re going to have to track him the old-fashioned way.”

“And why, exactly, did the SGC decided we didn’t need a tracking device in him so we could just beam him out?”

“Because the threat was gone, and he’s a civilian.”

Jonathan’s hand clenches into a fist. “Apparently not.”

“Why are you bickering?” Ronon asks, in that infuriating way that Ronon has of sounding like he doesn’t care about what’s going on around him and is also totally fine with everything.

“I _want_ to know why the Air Force failed to keep my _Guide_ safe.”

John touches the bridge of his nose, once, the one sign that he’s tired other than the fact that Jonathan can smell it. They all smell tired. They all are tired. “You know how the Air Force works. They’ll fix it after the fact. Can you function or do you need someone to sedate you?”

“If you sedate me I’ll kill you.”

John’s lips thin. “I’m a stable five-sense Sentinel with years of military training that whatever you’ve managed to study won’t trump.”

“I’m motivated.”

“I could kill both of you,” Ronon says. “If you want to find the Guide, you might want to stop bickering.”

Jonathan takes a deep breath, a breath that doesn’t taste the least bit like his Guide, and gets to work.

\--

Stiles wakes up, and he can open his eyes, and he doesn’t. He learned his lesson.

He learns his lessons.

He doesn’t know how to fake sleep so that werewolves will believe it, or Sentinels, but he can fake it well enough for humans, so he stays loose, keeping his breathing even and his eyes closed.

There is nobody around.

He can tell that, and after too long he realizes that means his Guide powers are back. Not totally, he doesn’t think, though right now he really wishes he’d listened to Blair more because then he might be able to actually do something useful.

Or at least do something more, because being able to tell that nobody is in the same room as him is pretty useful. He’s still not going to open his eyes, because they might have cameras on him, whoever they are, but it means that he has a little bit of time to figure out what the fuck is going on.

If his memory of being in a hospital is right, he’s in a hospital with people who are willing to drug him without concern, which means not a real hospital, and without his dad or Scott around, which probably means kidnapping, which is unnerving but way more likely than he would like because his life.

Alkasam means they know he’s a Guide. So does midazolam, probably. Either way, that’s not a great sign, because it means that, chances are, the people who have him are associated with the kidnapping ring from before. Which means they didn’t get all of them.

He took them down before, but that was mostly just by freaking the fuck out when Jonathan disconnected from him. The problem is that he has no idea how to replicate that. Other than maybe figuring out how to stab himself, but that’s an unappealing option. For obvious reasons.

On the other hand, he would take a little stabbing and bleeding if it got him out of wherever the fuck he is.

Not that he has any sort of stabby thing.

Which means he needs a Plan B.

Plan B starts with getting a stabby thing.

\--

Scott wishes they would let him get involved.

He gets the whole idea of how he’s not supposed to be involved because he’s a civilian, he’s a teenager, blah blah blah, but he’s a werewolf, and if they’d all stop running around trampling over everything and getting in the way and watching everything too damn closely he might actually be able to get something done.

It doesn’t help that there are so many Sentinels around, so he can’t actually do anything sneaky because being sneaky around Sentinels doesn’t work.

He can’t lose Stiles.

He’s trying really hard not to think about it, because if he starts thinking about it he’ll fall apart, and that won’t help anyone.

Lydia sits down next to him, and he doesn’t startle because he’s been tracking her since her car pulled up. He doesn’t usually do that, not to that level of precision, but he’s ramped up as hell right now, wanting to keep track of his entire pack at the same time. If he had his way they’d all be sitting there with him, but the military people and the Prime Pair and the fucking FBI might notice.

He knows Stiles’s Sentinel didn’t tell anyone about the werewolf thing, which, well, not that he doesn’t trust Stiles’s judgment, but Stiles didn’t pick him. And Scott is learning how to think things through and look to the future, and Stiles will be proud of him.

And once Stiles gets back, Scott might actually never let him leave. Or at least not until they get into college, and hopefully they’ll get into the same college and they can all stay together, though there’s no way that Lydia will go to the same college as them, because she’s really smart, and Stiles is really smart too and so Stiles is more likely to end up with Lydia, except there are a lot of colleges, and now he’s making himself sad again.

“If you start crying I will hurt you.”

Scott pulls Lydia against him, and she goes with him without fighting, which is a sign of how upset she is. “We’re going to get him back.”

“Kidnap victims don’t last that long once they’re taken.”

“But it’s Stiles. We’ll get him back.” He puts his arm around her shoulders. “Where’s Parrish?”

“Two rooms over, speaking to the Prime Pair and Special Agent Derek Morgan. Sometimes I do so wish Parrish would agree to threesomes.”

“You’re not old enough.”

“Threesomes don’t have an age restriction.”

“Sex does.”

She snorts. “Don’t pretend to be all pious, when I know you and Allison were sneaking around under her parents’ noses.”

Scott only flinches a little at that reminder of Allison, and he’s proud of himself for that. “That doesn’t mean you should be—” He shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. You’re trying to distract me.”

She shrugs. “You’re easier to distract than most people. You were glowing.” She reaches up and taps below his eyes. “You might want to watch it, or people are going to notice.”

“I told Stiles’s Sentinel. About—well, about me. I’m not sure if he believed me.”

“Is it a test, or did you just decide the best option was to just spread secrets to random people?” Her voice is a tad sharper now, but he doesn’t mind that much, because it’s Lydia.

“I can find Stiles.”

“Then do it.”

Scott rolls his eyes, waving his hands a little. “Okay, I can’t find him right now, but when they find him, I can…find him. Don’t—can _you_ find him?”

She presses her thumb against his wrist, nail running over his skin. “He’s still alive. You’d hear me screaming from the other side of the world if he were dead.” She taps the inside of his wrist. “I can feel him in me. I can feel all of you in me. I’m not letting you go, not if I have to pull every one of you kicking and screaming back into life. I will figure out how to if it requires drowning myself for the Nemeton and clinging on to each and every one of you with my bare hands.” She leans over and kisses his jaw, and he knows Stiles would be over the moon at that but Scott mostly just feels numb. “You’re a child, Scott. They’re keeping you safe.”

“I’m not a child.” He sounds petulant, he knows, but he’s not a child.

Lydia laughs. “You are a child. We’re both children.”

They sit there for a minute. He listens to everyone moving around, everyone working to try to find Stiles, until they all fade into nothingness like standing in the middle of a crowd. Finally, Scott says, “I’m scared.”

“I know,” she says. “That’s okay.”

\--

Stiles doesn’t have a stabby thing.

It’s unfortunate, his lack of a stabby thing, but it’s also been, by his estimate, at least fifteen minutes and nobody has come in yet even though his eyes are open, so at least there’s that.

He’s also figured out almost nothing about where he is, except that if it is a hospital it’s a quiet one, and hospitals are never quiet, but the room looks kind of like an OR, and he has the sudden memory of saying to the feds that maybe it’s human experimentation.

He’s not too fond of being the human in the experiment.

The fact that he’s still alive—he’s not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, because on one hand, he’s not dead, and on the other hand, vivisection seems really damn unpleasant and being cut up when he’s dead might be preferable to being cut up when he’s alive.

And he’s going to stop thinking about being cut up, because things already suck, and if they’re going to suck more he really doesn’t want to know.

There’s nothing useful nearby, nothing but him strapped to the fucking operating table, which is made of metal and hard and cold, and how can it still be cold if he’s been laying on it for however fuck long he’s been laying on it? But either way, there’s nothing around, no weapon, no scalpel, none of the useful things that are supposed to be around when you get kidnapped and stuck in an operating room.

He tries flailing around so he can flip the table or something, which, in hindsight, is probably good that it didn’t work because he would have landed on his face and that would have hurt, but it doesn’t work, so that’s kind of a moot point, and his life is just fucking fantastic right now.

He’s in the middle of wiggling around to try to get his hands free by possibly somehow making his wrists smaller and/or dislocating his thumbs when a man in a lab coat walks into the room reading a clipboard. Stiles tries to go still, but it’s not fast enough, because the man lowers the clipboard, swears, then heads over to Stiles.

Who stares up at him, and he doesn’t bother to hide his fury. “Let me go.”

The man touches the headset in his ear. “The subject is awake.”

Stiles tries to kick him, which only ends up with full-body spasms because he’s _still fucking tied down, motherfucker._ “My name isn’t the subject, and you need to fucking _let me go_.”

“Awake and agitated.” The man looks at Stiles. “Settle down. It’ll be easier for you.”

“Fuck you.”

The man lifts a hand and, casually, backhands him across the face. Stiles’s head snaps to the side, hitting the table, and pain blooms across both sides of his face, white and red and blue popping across his view. His lip splits, against his teeth he thinks, blood filling his mouth. He spits, and it doesn’t go particularly far, congealing against the metal near his head.

He has a brief moment of blinding clarity, during which he thinks maybe this beats a stabbing, and then the world disappears in a whirl of anger and fire and a bird cawing relentlessly in his brain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing this feels like one of those dreams where you're running and the closer you get to the end the slower you run until eventually you're just running in place.
> 
> It's almost done, I promise.


	29. Chapter 29

Derek knocks on the conference room door, then pushes in without waiting for an answer. Hotch and the Prime Pair look up from where they’re leaned over a mess of files on the table. “We’re getting reports of a mass empathetic event ten miles away.”

Hotch grimaces, straightening out. “When it rains, it pours.” He looks at the Prime Pair. “What do you think it is—a traumatic coming online? Some kind of attack?”

The Guide Prime thinks for a second, then stiffens. “How big is the event? How many reports are we at right now? What radius?”

Derek glances over his shoulder out at the bullpen. “Reid is plotting them on a map. Follow me.”

They head out into the bullpen, where everyone is crowded around the map Spencer is making marks on. The Guide Prime steps up next to him, asking, “Are these all reports?”

“911 calls and reports from the National Empathetic Distress Reporting Center.”

“I thought that map wasn’t up and running yet.”

“I’m mapping them based off of the address.” Spencer looks at the computer near him, then places another one on the map. “We seem to be looking at a fixed radius of approximately seven blocks with a center here, assuming accurately representational reporting.” It is not expanding, and there is no evidence of multiple origin points.”

“Seven blocks.” The Guide Prime looks at the Sentinel Prime. “I’m not sure if I could do seven blocks.”

“You could.”

“What does that mean?” Hotch cuts in.

The Guide Prime turns to look at them as Spencer adds another two points to the map. “The distance to which a Guide can project empathetic energy is directly related—if not directly proportional—to their power level. A level forty Guide may be able to do it by touch. A level fifty Guide may be able to do it without touch. To do what is being done, especially with this number of reports, implies that there is someone at least as strong as me who is projecting at the highest level they have.”

“So?”

“So either Incacha came here from Peru without telling anyone, or…”

“It’s Stiles,” the Sentinel Prime finishes.

Hotch turns to Spencer. “Can you find the origin from this map?”

Spencer circles an area. “Assuming a relatively circular output, it’s within this area.”

“Then let’s move.”

The Guide Prime makes a face. “I’d advise against that. Other than myself, Jim, Spencer, and the Sentinels, you’re as likely to be dropped as you were last time. I can shield Sentinels—a few Sentinels—and when prepared, Spencer can shield himself, but if it’s this bad I wouldn’t be able to shield all of you.”

Hotch’s lips press tight. “I don’t like the idea of sending you alone into this.”

“I can take over if necessary,” Colonel Sheppard says. “But we need to move, and we need to move now, and the Guide Prime is right—we can’t do this with you in tow. We’ll need backup as soon as we can talk the kid down or knock him out. Ronon, O’Neill, come on.” He touches the earpiece in his ear, turning away. “Rodney, I’m assuming you’re listening. I want information as it comes about the emotional disturbance in the area. I know you think emotional disturbances are bullshit, but I don’t care.”

\--

Jonathan feels Stiles as soon as they hit the edge of the empathetic event; there are ambulances and police cars around the entire perimeter, but they can’t get in to help because people seem to be hit with unspeakable panic as soon as they cross that line. The Prime Pair and the fed introduce themselves to the police, who have apparently been warned about them, and Sheppard turns to him and Ronon.

“The Guide Prime says that he can protect us from the influence, but that’ll require staying closer to him than I’d like. Ronon, you’re the one most likely to need him protection.”

Ronon shrugs. “I’ll protect them.”

“And keep them out of the way. I don’t want to be tripping over the civilians.” He looks at Jonathan. “You going to be able to keep a shield up? He dropped you last time.”

Jonathan nods. “The bigger question is if I can hold it without needing DKC. We trained with Guides in empathetic distress, but we almost always trained in DKC. Now that I’m prepared, I should be able to hold it.” He looks at Sheppard. “How about you? Can you hold against it outside of DKC?”

Sheppard’s jaw sets. “He’s not getting inside my head again.”

The Prime Pair and the fed head over to them, the Guide Prime focusing on Jonathan. “Ideally, as his Sentinel—and we’re going to have a discussion when this is all over about how that’s possible—you’re the best option to rein him in. You may be able to do it by talking to him, but the best option is physical contact.”

Jonathan’s hands actually flex at the thought of touching Stiles, and he knows they all notice, but nobody comments.

“What that means,” the Sentinel Prime adds, “is that our main priority is getting you to him in one piece.”

Jonathan has played deliver the package before, as Jack, but in those cases he wasn’t the package. And he’s not looking forward to it. “I can take care of myself.” The Prime Pair look skeptical, but the fed’s look is more contemplative than anything else. It’s a pain in the ass, none of them knowing his military history, because they think he’s just a civilian.

“We’re not expecting resistance,” the Sentinel Prime says, “because if there was a Guide strong enough to block him they would have stopped him by now. So the main focus will be on mental shielding. That being said, stay vigilant.”

“Ronon, Mr. O’Neill, stick with me, and I’ll keep you shielded. Colonel Sheppard, stay near Spencer—Dr. Reid.”

“We need to hold hands?” Jonathan asks, and maybe that was a little too snide but he’s not actually a twenty-whatever-year-old civilian and all he wants to do is fucking find his Guide, not stand around hearing about how he needs some guy to keep his head screwed on straight.

The Guide Prime takes it as a serious question, though. “Physical contact shouldn’t be necessary, though if you feel yourself struggling, it may help.”

They find the origin point without too much trouble, an old hospital that was shut down a few years ago, and Jonathan can feel the strain and press against his entire body like a weight, kicking up his heartrate, closing his throat. He’s not sure what the rest of them must be feeling; Ronon and the fed look particularly drawn. The Prime Pair look fine, and he’s pretty sure Sheppard is half the way into DKC.

There are guards just inside, two unconscious and one clutching his head, and Ronon and the fed take their weapons as Jonathan and Sheppard clear the area. Separating from the Guide Prime, even that distance, makes the press worse, like a weight on his chest. He knows it’s because Stiles is panicking, and he just wants to get to his Guide. He wants to help his Guide.

Once they’re done clearing that section, they move on to the next one, and Jonathan can tell that they’re getting closer by the way his heart feels like it’s going to pound out of its chest and his vision is throbbing with it. It’s panic, bitter against his tongue, pure unadulterated panic, and he knows that this is what his Guide is feeling, right now, and he needs to get to him, he just needs to get to him.

The Guide Prime puts a hand on his shoulder, and the pounding recedes a little even as Jonathan whips around to look at him. “Stay close to me,” he says, voice low. “It’s hitting you hard, probably through the bond. I can shield you from it, but only if you stay close.”

Jonathan grits his teeth and lets the Guide Prime touch him, and it helps but not enough, because he can feel the itching beneath his skin and the panic and he wants to pull himself into DKC but he can’t control himself enough to do it and he hasn’t struggled this much since Daniel died.

Another two guards, both down, and then a woman in a lab coat, and then they’re at a door that’s radiating more power than Jonathan has ever felt in his life.

The Guide Prime’s hand tenses on his shoulder, and the fed turns and walks away. Jonathan can’t blame him; he can barely keep himself standing under the press of that weight.

“Stiles.”

“He should be able to feel all of us,” the Guide Prime says, voice soft. It grates against Jonathan’s brain like metal. “We’re all going to give you a little space now. Best option is if you can touch him. He’s likely blind to the bond right now, but touch will reconnect him to it.”

Jonathan swallows, shoves one shaking hand in his pocket. “And if I can’t get in there?”

“Then open the door and talk to him.” The Guide Prime pats his shoulder. “Just talk to him.”

And then he steps back, and Jonathan can hear Ronon and the Sentinel Prime moving away as well. Finally, it’s just him and Sheppard, who looks somewhere between irritated and the half-blank determination that comes from being deep in DKC. “Can you do this?” Sheppard asks. “Because otherwise I’m going in there and zatting him. I have half a mind to do that anyway, save us the trouble.”

Jonathan holds off from attacking him out of sheer force of will. “Don’t touch my Guide. And you don’t know what zats do to Guide physiology.”

“Jackson seems fine,” Sheppard says.

Jonathan almost puts his teeth through each other, he’s grinding them so hard. “Leave.”

“You have fifteen minutes, and then I’m zatting him, Guide or not.” And then Sheppard leaves, too, and it’s just Jonathan left.

He takes a deep breath, braces himself, and opens the door.

And then a gunshot goes off, and “he knows Charlie’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead.

\--

“You okay, chief?” Jim’s hand touches the small of Blair’s back, and Blair leans back against him. He hates being out of the way, hates not being able to do anything. He knows at least some of that is the panic Stiles is putting out, but a lot of it is just the fact that this is who he is.

Blair nods. “I’m fine.” There’s a low-level strain from keeping the brunt of the empathetic distress off of everyone else, which has gotten worse since they got inside the building—Stiles is damn strong—but he can handle it, at least for an hour or so. He wouldn’t want to stay for too long.

Colonel Sheppard stops in front of him, and from the expression on his face he’s deep in DKC. “Why can’t you do this the way you did the last time, just take him down inside his own head?”

Jim bristles at that but settles when Blair touches his shoulder. “I may have more training and experience than Stiles, but he beats me at raw force. We got in last time because he let us in. But all of his power is dedicated to holding up those shields in his head. And he has something else in his head, bolstering his shields. With this level of empathetic distress, he’s not conscious enough to even think about lowering his shields to let me in.”

“So no way of forcing yourself in?”

“Spencer and I together likely couldn’t get ourselves into his head right now without doing serious damage to one or more of us. Potentially irreversible damage.”

Colonel Sheppard seems to consider that a second, then nods. “I’m going to walk to perimeter. Ronon, you good?”

Ronon nods; he looks pale and is sweating a little but straightens readily enough. “Yeah.”

“You take east, I’ll take west. Nobody comes in or out.”

Ronon nods again, pulling out the weirdest gun Blair has ever seen. “Got it.”

Colonel Sheppard’s face does something that almost mimics a smile; this far into DKC, Blair isn’t surprised he’s struggling to perform facial expressions properly. “Don’t kill anyone, if you have a choice. I’ve sat through enough lectures from General O’Neill in the past month.”

Ronon’s only response is to walk off, leaving Blair with Jim and Spencer. Who also doesn’t look like he’s doing too well. So Blair pats Jim’s shoulder one last time, then pushes away to head over to where Spencer is standing near another wall, head bowed, arms wrapped around his waist. “Hey, Spencer. How are you?””

Spencer swallows hard enough that his throat bobs up and down, a nervous gesture. “Fine.”

“Spencer—”

“Panic is not an ideal sensation for me,” he says, and he’s talking a little too fast. “Heart pounding, sweaty hands, hyperventilation—none of it leads to optimal mental processing, so I would, at present, prefer not to be panicking.”

“Would you like me to help your shielding—”

“ _No_.” Spencer’s shoulders hunch even more. “No. I don’t want you in my head. Sorry. Not—now.”

“Okay.” Blair knows Spencer doesn’t like touch, particularly, so he holds back from putting a hand on his shoulder. “The offer still stands, as long as we’re—”

“Blair.” Jim pushes off of the wall, heading over to set a hand on the back of Blair’s neck. Blair leans into it. “Something’s wrong. I can’t hear O’Neill.”

That’s a problem. “Nothing?”’

“Heavy breathing, fast. Three sets—I’m guessing one from Jonathan, one from Stiles, and one from someone in the room with Stiles. Nobody’s saying anything.”

Blair takes off down the hallway, Jim behind him, and the press of empathetic distress gets worse, so much worse, until even Jim is panting under the stress of it. They find Jonathan curled over on the ground in front of an open door, and Jim crouches down next to him as Blair heads in towards Stiles.

The press of panic is like fire against Blair’s skin inside the room where Stiles is strapped to a metal operating table, and he has to take a second to breathe, to push the emotion inside of himself, to give himself a layer of protection so Stiles can’t get to him. He might not be able to get into Stiles’s head, but he can keep Stiles from getting into his. He has that control, that training, and that power. And everything settles around him, like standing in the eye of a hurricane.

Ignoring the man in the lab coat sprawled on the floor, Blair hurries over to Stiles’s side. He’s thrashing and breathing like he’s in the middle of a nightmare, eyes wide open, soft whimpering noises coming from his throat.

Blair stops right next to him, not wanting to risk touching him yet. “Stiles. Stiles, it’s Blair. I want you to listen to me, if you can hear me. You’re safe. Do you understand? You’re safe here. Everyone who tried to take you, everyone who hurt you, they can’t do anything anymore, and so you’re safe. But for me to be able to help you or for you to be able to get out of here, I need you to calm down. Do you understand? I need you to take a deep breath and calm down.”

Stiles thrashes again, and Blair sees blood well up against his wrist, patterned against the dried blood that’s already there. If they’re hurting him that much, he’s unlikely to calm down without them coming off.

“Stiles, I’m going to free you now, but I need you to relax while I do it so I don’t hurt you. This is just going to take a few seconds, and then you’ll be free. Okay?”

He reaches out and grabs the nearest restraint, working at it, and it’s tight and hard and his fingers are slick with sweat and Stiles’s blood and slipping, and he can’t risk touching Stiles’s skin, and he keeps up a steady stream of reassurances through the whole thing, “You’re okay, Stiles, you’re safe, I’m going to get you out of this but you need to calm down, you need to calm down, you need to breathe—”

And then his fingers brush Stiles’s wrist, and he’s lost in a haze of fear and panic and the knowledge that Jim will leave him, that he will never be good enough, that he will never be enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are probably three chapters left after this one, assuming all goes well.


	30. Chapter 30

“The Guide Prime is down,” Scott hears, and then he’s on his feet, fingers pressed against Lydia’s wrist. She shakes him off, standing next to him, her head cocked in a way that tells him she’s listening. “I want the father here now.”

Lydia touches the back of Scott’s neck. “I’m getting Parrish. We’re going with him.”

“You shouldn’t be eavesdropping,” Scott says absently, even as he heads over towards Stiles’s dad’s office and Lydia splits off to go find Parrish. Stiles’s dad meets his eye through the window past Agents Hotchner and Morgan and nods slightly. He knows Scott’s listening, and he’s coming. Good. That wasn’t an argument Scott wanted to have.

He just wants to get Stiles back.

“Is that safe?” Agent Hotchner asks whoever’s on the phone.

“It’s that or I knock him out,” the man says. “And I don’t like hurting Guides, but I’m not particularly inclined to be gentle right now. I don’t know if the father will help—or even if he’ll be able to make it this close—but again, not too fond of hurting Guides.”

“I’ll take Deputy Parrish with me,” Stiles’s dad says.

He heads out of his office, and Scott falls in step with him, saying, “I’m coming with you.”

“I assumed so.” He grabs something from a file cabinet, handing it to Scott. “Keep this on you.”

It’s a lanyard with the sheriff’s department logo on a card at the end of it. “Are you deputizing me?” Scott asks as he slips it over his head and settles it against his chest.

Stiles’s dad laughs, a bit distractedly. “No. It just says you’re supposed to be with us. Let’s go.”

They make it pretty close by car and then walk the rest of the way, Lydia and Parrish clinging on to each other; Scott can feel the panic, like an asthma attack that he can breathe through, and it feels like _Stiles_. Scott isn’t sure if that’s a good thing, because it means he knows Stiles is alive, he’s alive and conscious enough to be scared, or a bad thing because if Scott is feeling this much terror, how much is Stiles feeling? And besides, Lydia is a pretty good barometer for if people are dead. People she cares about, at least.

Stiles’s dad is looking pretty shaky, so Stiles grabs his wrist and holds on. He’ll pretend it’s for him if Stiles’s dad needs.

When they get inside, they’re stopped by Colonel Sheppard, who looks grumpy and is wielding a gun that would make Chris Argent sit up and pay attention. Or maybe try to hump it, but he doesn’t want to think about that.

Stiles’s dad takes charge, demanding, “Where is my son?”

The colonel starts walking, presumably towards where Stiles is, but even as he does so he demands, “Why do you have civilians with you?”

“This is my deputy, his Sentinel, and Stiles’s oldest friend. If I can’t talk him down, Scott can.”

Colonel Sheppard glances back at them. “If you can’t talk him down, I’m knocking him out, scruples be damned. This is a courtesy, Sheriff, and I’m already regretting it.” He taps the earbud in his ear. “Ronon, I have the sheriff. Any sign of life?”

“The head senser stopped growling at me but his mate is still shaking,” the voice on the other end says. “Nobody else is moving.”

Scott is pretending he and Lydia aren’t listening, or at least that he’s not, because Lydia has an excuse for being able to hear it, so he looks at Lydia and asks, “You and Parrish have been in his head. Do you know why the Guide Prime wouldn’t have been able to get him out of his head?”

Lydia’s lips tighten with a look at the colonel. “There’s a chance the tree might still be in his head.” Scott stiffens, remembering Stiles when he wasn’t Stiles, but Lydia shakes her head. “Not the nogitsune—the nogitsune is gone. But there’s…an echo, I’d say, or a ghost. My guess is that the problem was that the Guide Prime tried to force his way in, and the tree didn’t like that. He let Jordan in. But force—that’s not going to work.”

“So Parrish isn’t going to be able to get in.”

Parrish gives a short laugh, strain evident on his face and in his heart rate, a little too fast. “No, I can’t get into his head. I’m barely keeping him out of our heads, and I’m pretty sure he’s not affecting us as strongly to begin with because he likes us.”

“You think he’s that conscious of what he’s doing?”

Parrish closes his eyes, head tilted a little like he’s listening, and Lydia puts her hand on the back of his neck to guide him as they keep walking. Finally, he opens his eyes and says, “I’m mostly just getting panic.” His pupils are blown wide now, and he leans down to press his face into her hair. Scott can hear his heart pounding, so fast Scott is actually a little worried for him. “If you go in there, I’m not sure how well I’m going to be able to shield you. Stiles is uncomfortably strong, and right now all of his energy is being used to project.” His hand closes around Lydia’s hip. “The Guide equivalent of DKC isn’t particularly well-developed or effective, and I’m concerned about having a flashback if I get too close. I’ll get you there, but it wouldn’t be a good idea for me to go in there with you.”

Stiles’s dad nods, then looks at Colonel Sheppard. “How much further?”

“He’s at the end of the next hallway.” They turn the corner, and Colonel Sheppard stops. “He’s through that door. From what I can tell from the Guide Prime, physical contact initiated a much stronger response.”

So no touching. Scott can do that.

Stiles’s dad looks at him. “Scott, are you up for this?”

Scott has managed to swallow down most of the anxiety and panic, mostly through practice talking Stiles down from panic attacks, and being a werewolf actually helps because it means he has to know how to control his breathing and his temper and everything, so he should be able to deal with this.

So he nods, and he and Stiles’s dad head down the hallway to the room where Stiles is being held. The door is closed, and Stiles’s dad takes a deep breath before opening it.

Panic hits Scott like a wave, and he breathes through it, letting his nails shoot out because it’s easier than fighting it. That’s what he’s found with all of the werewolf stuff, that you fight the important stuff like not hurting people by letting the little stuff come out when he can’t help it.

And then he looks up and the anger hits him, because Stiles is strapped down to a metal table, blood all around his wrists and ankles where he’s been struggling against them, and his eyes are wide and panicked. He’s panting and whimpering and Scott can smell his fear from where he’s standing. It saturates the room until the air is heavy with it.

Stiles’s dad takes in a sharp breath, straightens his shoulders, and says, “Get him out of those restraints. Stiles has always been weird about restraints, and I don’t think that’s helping.”

Scott hurries over to where Stiles is strapped down, peering at the straps. The ones at the feet are padlocked shut, and, looking around, he can’t see a key anywhere. That kicks his heartrate up and makes it harder to think, and he presses his palms against his thighs to try to stop them trembling. “They’re locked.”

Stiles’s dad shoots him a look from where he’s standing near Stiles’s head. “You have claws, Scott, cut through them.”

Right. Scott tries to get his head together, then gets to work cutting at the straps holding him down. Stiles starts kicking as soon as he starts doing that, so Scott has to dodge his legs because he doesn’t want to touch his skin. Which he hates, because they’re pack and pack loves touch and he hates not being able to comfort him by touching him because _that’s what they do_.

He gets one strap off and moves on to the next, listening to Stiles’s dad keep up a litany of reassurances. “You’re safe, Stiles. I’m here now, and you know I wouldn’t lie to you. But you’re going to hurt people, Stiles, and I know you don’t want to do that, so you need to take a deep breath, slow your heart rate, and calm yourself down.” Stiles’s free foot kicks out, and Scott jerks out of the way so as not to get hit, still working at cutting Stiles out of the straps. “I know you’re scared right now, but you stopped the people who were trying to hurt you, and now you’re just getting in the way out getting us out of here. So take a deep breath, Stiles, and calm down.”

Scott finally gets through the damn strap with a quiet noise of excitement, then heads up towards Stiles’s hands. Stiles’s dad glances up at him, then leans back down towards Stiles. “Scott is here, too. Scott came for you, just like I did.” Scott mouths Lydia at him, and he smiles a little. “Lydia, too, though she’s outside, so you need to calm down before you can see her.”

Scott gets the strap off of Stiles’s wrist, and his hand lashes out at Scott, hitting him in the shoulder. Panic like blood and copper and static shoots through his brain, and he stabs his claws into his thighs to keep from freaking out worse. He can feel himself starting to bleed, but he keeps one hand’s claws stuck in his leg because otherwise he might actually shift, as fast as his heart is pounding, and that would be bad.

Stiles takes in a sharp breath and then starts audibly hyperventilating, which is also bad, and his dad swears under his breath. “Okay, Scott, can you talk to him? I don’t—shit, I want a drink.” Scott can see the fear and hopelessness on his face, and he just wants it to go away because that’s what he does, that’s what he tries to do, and sometimes he fails. He feels like, more often than anyone else, he fails Stiles, because he keeps letting Stiles get hurt and he keeps not being there for him and he failed Allison, too, he fails everyone, and he’s not going to fail Stiles this time.

So he digs his claws deeper into his leg, takes a breath, and says, “Stiles, I want you to breathe in with me. In-two-three-four-five and out-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight and in-two-three-four-five and remember when you taught me about this, when you talk me about how you’re supposed to breathe out for longer than you breathe in because—because of something. See, you need to remind me of what that is, because I can’t remember, and how am I supposed to know without you to explain this to me? But for you to explain this to me, you need to stop hyperventilating, because it gives you too much oxygen or something, and that’s bad for your brain, and your brain is the best part of you, and so that would be bad. So you need to breathe in again for one-two-three-four-five and then out again for one-two-three-four-five-six-seven eight.”

Stiles takes in a sharp, shuddering breath along with Scott’s count, then lets it out slowly, and then he turns towards his dad, curls up around the hand that isn’t out of its restraint yet, and starts to sob.

Around him, the feeling of panic fades like smoke clearing from a room.

\--

“I look like I’m into unsafe bondage practices.”

Lydia looks up from her book on modular arithmetic to give him a flat stare. “Put a lot of thought into that, have you?”

Stiles glances down at the bandages around his wrists, which were changed a few minutes ago to give him a good look at the fucked up mess that is his wrists after like an hour of struggling against restraints that were not made for comfort. “I mean, you wouldn’t want to do unsafe bondage practices. Like when you’re doing shibari you should make sure to have scissors with you. Though there’s some debate about whether Americans should be calling it kinbaku instead, because—well, because of some Japanese stuff that I’m not that sure about because I read the Wikipedia article a while ago and also they have me on anti-anxiety medication and so my head is fucked up right now.”

She looks back down at her book, eyes moving in a way that means that she’s actually reading. “They don’t have you on anti-anxiety medication.”

“I’m pretty sure they do.”

“They have you on NSAIDs for your wrists, your ankles, and your three bruised ribs. You’re not any anti-anxiety medication. On the other hand, you were kidnapped, and you also used an exorbitant amount of energy panicking a seven block radius worth of people. Stop picking at your bandages.”

Stiles drops his hands away from his wrists, but there’s nothing else to fiddle with, so he starts chewing on his thumb. “You don’t need to stay, you know.”

Lydia turns the page of her book, not bothering to up at him. “If you insist on getting yourself kidnapped, I insist on staying.”

“I didn’t _try_ to get myself kidnapped.”

“And yet you succeeded at it anyway.” Her head tips to the side slightly. “Your Sentinel is arguing with the Sentinel Prime.”

“Is he…okay?” Jonathan had been in earlier, but Stiles hadn’t been particularly functional at the time, and he only vaguely remembers that conversation.

Lydia rolls perfectly-made-up eyes. “He’s fine. He’s upset with himself for letting you get hurt, because you’re a Guide, but he’s functional.”

“‘Functional’ isn’t particularly reassuring.”

“Nobody ever accused me of being reassuring. _Stop_ picking at your bandages.”

Fuck. Stiles rubs his eyes. “When are they going to let me out of the hospital?”

“I don’t know, I’m not a doctor.” She glances at the door. “Do you want to talk to the Guide Prime? Because otherwise I’ll keep him out.”

Does Stiles want to talk to Blair? No, he really doesn’t. He really unbelievably doesn’t. But he probably should.

So he nods. “Sure. I guess.”

She purses her lips, then calls, “Prime Sandburg, you can stop hovering outside the door and come in.”

The door slides open—and hooray for having a private room, which Stiles is pretty sure is as much because of the military contingent following him around as anything else—and Blair walks in. He looks tired when he closes the door behind him.

“Ms. Martin. Would you mind waiting outside so that I can talk to Stiles privately?”

“Yes,” she says, then turns a page.

Blair shoots a helpless look at Stiles. “This is a conversation that, for your own privacy, you may want us to have…privately.”

Stiles shrugs. “Lydia can stay. I’d probably tell her anyway, and she probably knows more about my medical history than I do.”

“You need more Vitamin C,” she tells him, and Stiles refrains from laughing by the skin of his teeth.

Blair visibly considers and then reconsiders responding, before sitting down in one of the other chairs next to the hospital bed. “You’re going to need training. You can’t argue that anymore, not after what happened.”

“Yeah, I’m not going to argue that.”

The relief on Blair’s face is visible. “Your choices, then, are me or Peru.”

Stiles blinks at him. “Peru?”

“Incacha is the only Guide who is—likely—stronger than you. I understand if you don’t want to train under me, given that the experience was…less than ideal for you previously.”

“So your solution is to send me to _Peru_?”

Lydia sounds like she snorts from where she’s reading, but when he looks over at her, she’s fully focused on integers or whatever she’s reading about.

Blair smiles a little. “I’m just putting forward another possible solution.”

“Yeah, no, I’m not going to Peru.” Stiles starts picking at his bandages again, until Lydia looks up to glare at him. He needs something to do with his hands, and there’s nothing to do with his hands, and it’s bothering him. “I’ll train under you. I just need to finish the school year, because I’m not getting this far and not finishing it.”

Blair nods. “Fair enough. And I don’t suppose you would be willing to tell me how you and your Sentinel are living apart from each other?”

“That’s classified.”

“I figured you’d say that.” He scowls a little. “Next time something happens, Stiles, or if you’re having trouble, please let me know.”

Stiles buries his head in his hands. “I didn’t mean to get myself kidnapped. I didn’t, like, call them and tell them to kidnap me. It wasn’t on purpose.”

Blair pats his shoulder. “None of us are blaming you.” He stands. “That’s all I needed for right now. Get some rest. I’ll be in touch.”

Great.

\--

“Can we just tag this kid?” John asks, and his voice is just insolent enough that O’Neill-the-real-one smiles.

Daniel Jackson is the one who responds, saying, “Technically we need his father’s permission to implant a tracking chip in him, given that he’s under eighteen.”

John doesn’t like the idea of having to go after this kid a second time, especially given how strong he is, so he says, “Technically we don’t have an intergalactic transportation device in our basement either.”

O’Neill leans back in his chair, putting his hand on the back of Jackson’s neck. “We can do the same thing we did with the NDA and pull his age from Mini-Me.” He glances up. “Carter’s coming.”

John stands when General Carter walks into the room, then sits when she waves him down. She looks about as exhausted as he feels. “General.”

O’Neill smirks at her. “General. Is Mini-Me safe?”

She hands over a file to him, and he opens it and immediately shoves it over at Jackson. “Through this latest kidnapping, we found that this was a rogue element of the NID—”

“ _I knew it_.”

“—that accessed the SGC server and found our file on Jonathan’s Guide. We think we’ve tracked the rest of them down through a combination of the kidnapping and the hack, though I’m still recommending putting a security detail on Jonathan’s Guide, as well as giving him a subcutaneous tracker.”

“So we got all of them?” O’Neill asks.

Carter makes a face. “Probably. I’m in touch with Barrett, and he thinks we’ve gotten all of them, but he’s still investigating. Somehow they also got half a dozen symbiotes that they managed to change the genetic memory of to make controllable.”

O’Neill groans. “Just what we need.”

“We have one that we’re studying, but the rest have been destroyed. I think,” Carter says, “that it’s over.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One chapter left and then it's done.


	31. Chapter 31

“You sure you don’t want me to go to the airport with you?”

Stiles looks up from fishing around in his backpack for his wallet, which is…somewhere. “I know how to drive, Dad.”

“Are you sure?”

“You haven’t slept in, what, twenty-four hours working on the Aletta case? And don’t make that face at me; you know I monitor the police channels when you’re out for that long.”

His dad still makes that face at him. The stop-monitoring-police-channels look. Stiles knows that look. He frequently gets that look. “Stiles—”

“There will likely be…touching. A lot of touching. Which you will not appreciate. So let’s…not.”

His dad makes a face. “You know, I think I’ll stay here. Catch up on some sleep.”

“Good choice.” Stiles locates his wallet and pulls it out, waving it. “See?”

“Yes, Stiles, I see your wallet.” His dad checks his watch. “Aren’t you going to be late?”

Fuck. Stiles shoves his wallet in his pocket, grabs his keys, and heads out.

It turns out he’s not late, but that’s mostly because the plane is late, which is fantastic and also definitely going to make him even antsier once he gets off it. Which is fantastic. Antsy sentinels are Stiles’s favorite people, except maybe hunters with guns and only a little bit of a conscience.

Chris Argent is a train wreck waiting to happen, and everyone knows it.

But then finally the plane gets out, at least according to the handy little Arrivals board, and then Stiles can _feel_ his Sentinel coming closer like a sun there on earth, in that airport. And he wants to close his eyes and bask in it, but he also doesn’t want to miss his Sentinel, so he just stands there against one wall, fidgeting with his phone, checking the time over and over and over. Eight-oh-four. Eight-oh-four. Eigh-oh-five.

And then his Sentinel is there, in front of him, and Stiles only has a moment’s breath before Jonathan’s arms are around him.

“Hi,” Stiles says.

Jonathan hums but otherwise doesn’t move, his face not moving from where it’s buried against the crook of Stiles’s neck. “You smell like people.”

“I’m in an _airport_.”

Jonathan laughs shortly. “I hate airports.”

Stiles winds his fingers up through Jonathan’s hair. “I know. How are you?”

Jonathan groans, lifting his head up from Stiles’s shoulder to glare blearily at him. “I would be better if you wouldn’t keep texting me during my seminars.”

“You don’t need to look at them.”

That earns him a flat stare. “You’re my Guide.”

“Right.” Whoops. “I’ll stop.”

Jonathan drops his head back down on Stiles’s shoulder, and Stiles can _feel_ the shield starting to reform from Jonathan around him. “You don’t have to.” He sighs, a spot of heat against Stiles’s shoulder. “I feel like I’ve had a headache for months, and now it’s finally gone.”

“I know. You feel good.” Stiles sighs, letting himself relax in what feels like the first time in forever. “Are we actually going to head to Beacon Hills or are we going to stand here in this airport all day?”

Jonathan groans. “Fine, let’s go.”

\--

They get all the way out to the car with only minimal clinging, at which point Jonathan fishes the keys out of Stiles’s pocket with a remarkable amount of dexterity and insists on driving. Which is definitely not happening.

“It’s my car.”

Jonathan scowls at him. “I’m driving.”

Stiles tries to pull the keys back, which doesn’t work super well because Jonathan is an asshole and also military trained. “Give me my keys back. You’re not driving my car.”

Jonathan pins him to the side of the car with one hand—which feels better than it should, because the shields are still setting and it’s like what he imagine drugs are like minus the…drug part—and sits in the driver’s seat. Which, no, is definitely not happening, so Stiles pushes him over sideways until Stiles can also sit down, and now he’s in front of the steering wheel, which is how it’s supposed to work.

“My car.” Stiles pulls his keys away from Jonathan, who looks a little surprised. “I drive my car.”

Jonathan scowls at him but doesn’t make Stiles move, which is good, because Stiles is driving and that’s final.

Once they’re on the highway and Jonathan has stopped jerking and flinching at every passing car—which is the other reason Stiles is driving, damn it, he knows what to do, he’s read books and stuff—Stiles asks, “Would you rather meet my dad and everyone else in a non-traumatic way first, or grab coffee or something? Dial down before you have to deal with people?”

Jonathan thinks about it for a second, then says, “Coffee.”

“Fair enough. I can always use coffee.” Stiles taps on the steering wheel arrhythmically. “Do you still want this? Me, I mean. And the whole thing with the—us.”

“You mean the bond?”

“Yeah.” Stiles pokes at the steering wheel. “Mostly. Yeah. It’s, uh—yeah.”

Jonathan is silent, and Stiles keeps from looking at him out of sheer will and the desire to not make a fool out of himself by reacting to whatever he sees on Jonathan’s face. Because this long of silence is kind of a bad sign, and Stiles is fucking fantastic at emotional processing, thank you very much, and also he probably shouldn’t have had this conversation while driving.

Finally, Jonathan asks, “Do you not want to be bonded to me?”

Stiles presses his hand to the bridge of his nose, mostly as a way to avoid face-palming. “I asked you first.”

“I asked you second.”

“Are we seriously playing this game?”

“Stiles.”

Stiles wants to throw up his hands, except he’s driving, damn it. “Why wouldn’t I want to stay bonded with you? I’m fucked if I do, fucked if I don’t, and I can live separately from you, and you’re not a dick.”

Jonathan laughs a little harshly. “Quite a set of standards you have there.”

Stiles can’t have this conversation while driving, so he turns into a side street and pulls over. “Okay, seriously, what the fuck do you want from me? You want to know what I want? I want to not be a Guide. That would be ideal. But it’s also not feasible, so I’ll take what I can get. And maybe we’ll end up liking each other. I mean, I already like you, more or less. I don’t have anything against you, and there are very few people I can actually say that about, so take that for the high bar that it is. And you’re witty over text. So yeah, I want to stay bonded to you. But if you don’t want to be stuck with the ADHD fuckup, just let me know.”

“You’re not a fuckup.”

“Yeah, well, still didn’t answer the question. I get it if you—look, this might be wrong, but I’m assuming you’re straight, and you probably want to have sex with a woman at some point in your life, and that tends to not work super well with situations like this, and also if you’re not going to have sex with me I’d like to have sex at some point in my life, and this is all great and all, but I—”

Jonathan’s hand closes around the back of Stiles’s neck, pulling him close, and then they’re kissing, and it’s like an epiphany, like finding gold and also rainbows. When Jonathan pulls away, though, he just looks vaguely apologetic. “I should have asked first,” he says, sliding a hand up into Stiles’s hair. “Stiles, I like you. I don’t love you, not now, and I couldn’t have sex with you at eighteen, because right now you’re reading more like child than like lover. But yes, eventually. And in the meantime, when we’re separated, I would be able to deal with you having sex with other people.” The last sentence is said through gritted teeth, sounding like he has to force it out.

Stiles is listening to him, but mostly all he’s thinking about is the kiss, and the fact that Jonathan kissed him, which is—

Unexpected.

“You kissed me.”

Jonathan blinks at him. “What?”

“You kissed me. That was a thing that you did. That’s not a thing I was expecting you to do.” Stiles touches his lips, which are still tingling a little. “Huh.”

“I should have asked permission first.”

“No, no, I’m okay without you asking permission. I mean, not as a general blanket thing, because sexual assault is icky, so no, but that was okay. I’m okay with that. It was okay.”

Jonathan smiles a little. “I get it.”

Stiles stares at him for a minute, but he doesn’t say anything else. “So is that a yes?”

“To what question?”

To what question? What does he mean, what question? Stiles waves his hands around. “To the question. My question. The—the question about—about whether you still want me.”

“Ah,” Jonathan says, “that question. Yes. That’s a yes to your question. I do still want to be bonded to you. Can we go get coffee now?”

“Yeah.” Stiles lets out a breath. “Yeah, let’s go get coffee.”

\--

Stiles gets a large coffee because he needs it, and then Jonathan sticks them in the corner of the coffee shop in a place where he can watch the door and everyone in the coffee shop at the same time. He’s calming down, but he still looks strung tight. So Stiles nudges him with his foot until their ankles are touching, skin-to-skin.

The hunted look fades a little from Jonathan’s eyes.

He’s not smiling yet, but he takes a real sip of coffee instead of the fake half-sips that looked more like habit than actual desire to drink coffee.

When it becomes clear that Jonathan isn’t going to say anything without prompting, Stiles asks, “Are you ready for training with Jim and Blair?”

Jonathan takes another drink of coffee, then leans back in his chair. “Being around other high-level Sentinels is…uncomfortable, but it is necessary.”

That’s enthusiastic. “Actually, speaking of that, are you—do you know if you’re stronger than Jim? Or—I’m not sure how the ranking works for Sentinels, actually, which is a thing I feel like I should know.”

“Beyond the number of senses, we don’t have a ranking system the same way that Guides do. There are tests that we can do for different senses—distance, sensitivity—but there are so many variations and differences and it’s not a particularly helpful metric for anything other than some military usages. We pull our ranking from you.”

“So technically you’re stronger than him.”

Now he smiles. “Higher ranked, but yes, I guess I am.”

Which reminders him of the mess that they’re going to be walking into in a couple days. “With that, uh…so I’m the strongest Guide in North America. Probably. The strongest recorded Guide. Which, wow, that’s a horrifying thing to say out loud. So with that comes…other than having to train, which you know is a thing I need to do, which is why it’s a thing we’re going to go do in like three days, Blair—Blair wants to train me to be the next Guide Prime. Which involves you training to be the next Sentinel Prime, and so I guess I probably should have asked you the whole ‘do you want to stay together’ question after this conversation.”

Jonathan stares flatly at him for a minute, then takes an unnervingly long drink of coffee. Stiles doesn’t say anything while he does that, partly to wait to see what Jonathan says, partly because he’s afraid of Jonathan choking.

Finally, Jonathan asks, “When would this happen?”

“What do you mean?”

“What’s the timescale we’re looking at? One year? Five? Ten?”

Oh. Stiles laughs. “No, this is like twenty years from now, or whenever Blair and Jim want to retire. And/or die. This isn’t an immediate thing, but Blair wants to start that kind of training early in case he needs me to take over in case of emergency. Because right now, there isn’t really a designated backup in case something happens to one of them, because there wasn’t really anyone strong enough.”

“Okay.”

“Okay like you understand what I’m saying, or…?”

Jonathan’s ankle nudges Stiles’s. “Okay like I’m not arguing with you. I understand duty.”

“Great.” Stiles waves his hands. “So you can do your military thing or whatever, and then when you’re too old to go out and shoot aliens, we can be the new Prime Pair. Which, again, wow, those are horrifying words coming out of my mouth. But I need the training, and…and I think I could be good at it.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” Stiles says, and laughs.

\--

Jonathan greets Stiles’s dad with a firm handshake. Stiles’s dad greets Jonathan with a scowl. “You’re still too old.”

They’re off to a great start.

Stiles briefly considers sticking his head on Jonathan’s shoulder as a sort of face-palm but like a shoulder-palm, but one look at his dad’s face tells him that that’s probably a bad idea. So instead he just shoves his hands in his pockets so he doesn’t start flailing like an idiot and says, “We’re not having sex, if that makes you feel better.”

His dad turns a fun shade of pink. “You need to work on your making-people-feel-better skills.”

Stiles shrugs. “Probably.”

His dad looks at Jonathan. “How do I know you’re good for my kid?”

Stiles gets the impression Jonathan wants a strong drink, but instead he puts on a good face and says, “My main priority is keeping him safe and happy.”

“Bang up job at that so far.”

Jonathan’s eyes flinch, but otherwise his face stays placid. “I’ll admit that I’ve been less than successful at that so far.”

“It’s not his fault that I got kidnapped,” Stiles puts in, because it’s not.

“It’s okay,” Jonathan says, touching Stiles’s shoulder. His lips press thin. “There are things that I can’t tell you because they’re classified, but I am qualified to keep him safe. When we’re in proximity to each other, at least. And when we’re not, the Air Force is looking out for him.”

Stiles touches his upper arm self-consciously, and his dad’s eyes track that. “And why is that, precisely?”

“My…parents are a one star general and a three star general in the Air Force.”

His dad’s eyebrows go up. “General Jack O’Neill. He’s your father?”

Jonathan hesitates, then nods. “You know him?”

“I met him briefly while Stiles was in the hospital. The first time.” His dad lets out a slow breath. “I still don’t like this, because you’re still too old, but…I guess you’ll do. For now. Now I’m getting a drink.”

“Dad—”

“ _And steak_.”

“No.” Stiles hurries after his dad. “You’re not having steak. We’re having vegetables. Also it’s not dinner time. Why are you talking about steak? What’s wrong with you?”

His dad laughs, and Stiles feels a little bit better.

After pouring himself a drink, Stiles’s dad turns back to look at them. “The guest room is set up. You can crash there.”

“I actually got a hotel room.”

“Okay.”

His dad seems weirdly okay with that, which probably means he doesn’t get the rest of it. “I’m going with him.”

“No.”

“Dad.”

“Stiles.”

“ _Dad_.”

“ _Stiles_.” His dad drains the glass. “You’re not sharing a hotel room with your twenty-something-year-old Sentinel. It’s not happening. Not while you’re still a minor.”

For fuck’s sake. “We’re not having sex.”

“I don’t care.” His dad levels a glare at Jonathan. “He’s an adult and you’re not, and I’m not letting you go off with him.”

“Derek used to break in through my window.”

His dad pours himself another drink. “Not helping, Stiles.”

“My point is that—actually, that didn’t help my point. But…look, we can just stay here in my room.”

“And he can stay in the guest room.”

Stiles tries to pull out the last card. “It’ll help my shields.”

“He can help your shields from the guest room.”

“Dad—”

“It’s fine,” Jonathan says, and Stiles turns to look at him; he looks exhausted. Abruptly, Stiles feels guilty, because he doesn’t need to listen to Stiles and his dad bicker right now. Though them sleeping in the same bed really will help rebuild his shields. And it feels good. “I’ll stay in the guest room here if it makes you more comfortable.”

“Good.” His dad drains the second glass. “I’m going to sleep.”

Jonathan goes to sleep that night in the guest bedroom, lines of strain easing from his face as he drifts off. And when Stiles crawls into bed with him, curls up, and drops off, he smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tada! It's done!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [gathered into one](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11599695) by [elumish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elumish/pseuds/elumish)




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